![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
And one week finished - 4 June 2010
Jun. 5th, 2010 12:40 amHello, sport fans! There will soon be a big football tournament in South Africa. For those who need a quick primer on what to watch for, the guide to the World Cup (when you're just here for the hot men) will do nicely.
Less happily, Diana Wynne Jones may be aproaching the end, so much that she has decided to abandon her chemotherapy. And, yes, Rue McClanahan died at 76, removing another “Golden Girl” and Gary Coleman died at 42, giving the Dead Pool (and Avenue Q) a few things to chew over while they await their next residents.
Out in the world today, a novel approach to de-stressing police people and learning new skills - a Zen Buddhist retreat, which turns their heirarchy upside down and gives them new exercises and disciplines to work with.
We may have mentioned this before, but if we did, enjoy it again - a party created by a comedian that promised lots and said they wouldn't fulfill any of them has won the most seats on a city council. Well, we have always claimed that if the people had a candidate that they knew was being truthful, even if they were promising the worst of outcomes, they’d get elected because they told the truth.
Still undeterred from trying to pass a bill criminalizing LGBT sex, a Ugandan pastor describes what he thinks homosexuals do behind closed doors, invoking scat play as something that every gay man does (among other things).
Israel is preparing itself for another ship headed for Gaza, and the Prime Minister claims this one won't get by, either. Bets on whether or not we get realy good video from this particular incident? (To their credit, Israel has offered to have the ship unload in a nearby port, inspect the cargo, and send it on.) That way, we can avoid accusations that the media misrepresented the true purpose of the aid flotilla, taking the peace people at their word instead of assuming they had a hidden agenda based on their associations. (Hey, where have I heard that before?)
New data leaked from a defector in Burma/Myanmar suggests the ruling junta are developing a program to deliver long-range nuclear-tipped missiles.
The United States administration is quietly trying to have funding for training Iraqi security personnel reinserted into a defense authorization bill after the chair of the Armed Services Committee cut it out, claiming Iraq is able to start funding their own security training.
Domestically, The Paper of Record has infographics about many aspects of the oil crisis. And then there are the people who know what its like and can picture it in vivid detail. Finally, no imagination needed - this is what birds caught in an oil spill look like. And some news organizations are seeing the whole deadly truth. I would not be surprised if someone finally decided to require that oil rigs be able to defeat disasters and spills at the depth they were planning on drilling before they would be allowed to drill at that depth. If that means decreased domestic supply and a push toward renewables and other forms to make up the gap, happy consequence. The President has canceled trips to stay home and keep his fingers on the pulse of the oil.
Those working on the spill and with dispersants are complaining of sickness symptoms. Perhaps because they had to go out and handle things without protective gear and safety precautions? Which makes the cleanup effort kind of like how the whole thing started in the first place?
And financially, BP's shares took a drubbing, but apparently not enough to stop a shareholder payout of $10 billion USD, which tells me they’ve still got money they should be throwing at the problem. Just wish that the Dems would kick the Republicans in the shins, the knees, and then the genitals for obstructing the measure to raise liability caps and pass it anyway.
As we can clearly see, letting the free market handle this is a losing prospect now, and the historical precedent from Exxon-Mobil is not good either, so why don’t we just say “To hell with it. You make no profit until this is cleaned up. All of your avilable resources will be diverted to cleaning this up, and then when we’re done, you will smile for the cameras as we institute and enforce regulations that will make sure this never happens again.” And anyone howling about a government takeover gets the smile that says, “Are you siding with the people who deliberately circumvented safety protocols and created this disaster, or do you want to fix things and make sure it doesn’t happen again? Choose wisely.”
The Governor of Arizona and the President squared off on the Papers Please law, border security and immigration, and did not find much for common ground on how to tackle the problem. The CW is that the Governor is trying to look tough to get re-elected, and the President is looking to make progress on the actual issue.
In opinions today, Mr. Rove starts the festivities by claiming the voters will find all about the intended consequences of the health care bill as Medicare gets cut and corporations affected by taxes and requirement merrily pass the costs on to their consumers and employees, raising premiums and/or dumping coverage completely. And this is somehow the government’s fault for enacting the legislation that the corporations have decided they don’t want to pay for. Some days, I do wish there were an enforcement mechanism that would stop corproations from passing on new costs like this to their consumers in the form of higher prices, premiums, and reduced coverage. Other days, I wonder how such a mechanism would be perverted.
Mr. Hanson waxes poetic about all the failures of European democratic socialism, in multi-country bailouts, lower population rates, atheism, freeloading on the United States military might, and lower worker productivity, and then wonders why the United States wants to follow that model of being eceonmically weak, tolerant of people he thinks we shouldn’t be, and overrun by religious zealots. Mr. Barone thinks the President's Chicago Way means endless raids of the private sector for treasure and lots of crony capitalism for those fortunate enough to be politically connected. And Mr. Elder uses the U.S. response to Israel's flotilla fracas to recite his litany of "Things This President Did Wrong" (which are conveniently all the things I don't like) and complain that the world is more dangerous now that Barack Obama is in charge.
Mr. Thomas crows about what he sees as the melting credibility of the climate change people, based on, wait for it, cooler possible temperatures and the fact that most of the non-scientists are choosing to believe what they see and feel now, rather than giving a thought to what the short- and long-term future might hold. There’s also a dig in there about how global warming would have done better if it had attempted to say we should stop our dependence on foreign energy and encouraged both more domestic drilling (taking up the Palinesque cry of blaming environmentalists for causing the Deepwater Horizons disaster because they forced these oil companies to drill and explore further offshore) and new energy sources. Oh, wait, they were. Fact-check, aisle four, please.
Last in the opinions, a pairing about social morality and religion in America. First up, Mr. Kuhner complains about the constant media/Hollywood war on Christianity, starting with comedy Central’s “JC”, a cartoon that aims to portray a Jesus that’s more human (and rebellious) than divine, and then spends a lot of time going through the “double standard” for Islam, because CC’s execs axed Trey and Matt’s send-up of Mohammed out of fear while letting them portray a deviant Jesus, before skipping lightly on the “liberals hate Christians and want to eradicate morality” at the end (more on that in the other column). Apparently, they were afraid of Muslim violence, while Christian violence just doesn’t happen. Shouldn’t that be a positive point for the Christians, that there’s really no danger of violent reaction to satire, and that, so long as you’re not gay, believe something other than Christianity, or an abortion provider, there’s no real danger of religiously-motivated violence from Christians? Mr. Kuehner can’t accept this position, though, and so he needs enemies. Hollywood and Islam are the easy ones to poke at, because Islam is still working out the issues of violence and empire that Christianity supposedly got over a few centuries ago, and because Hollywood thrives on selling you things you want to see and things hat will shock you. If only the whole world decided they were going to be his particular brand of Christians, we wouldn’t have this problem. At all.
So column two is from Mr. Knight, who complains about our sexual morality, the columnists and pundits feel like they're "smarter than God" about what appropriate human sexuality is. He does his argument no favors by accusing polls in favor of removing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell of having a uniform liberal bias, but settles finally into his argument that humans who believe that LGBT should be fully accepted, instead of held at arms’ length and routinely scolded for being deviants and told in no uncertain terms that their bodies and souls will rot in hell forever for being deviants and that repentance and heterosexuality are always just a choice away, are saying they’re smarter than the God who designed the bodies male and female and intended them to be married. Such hubris, naturally, cannot end well. He then returns to doing his argument injustice by claiming all studies starting with Kinsey that indicate that gay is natural are junk, manufactured, and frauds to push an agenda, the tip of the spear of socialist attacks against the founding Judeo-Christian values that Keep Us Safe and Preserve Our Liberty and Freedom. Plus, ex-gay people! All the ex-gay people! They’re being ignored! (Because scientifically, ex-gayness doesn’t work. You can’t claim that science has to be followed rigorously and then shirk when those conclusions say you’re wrong, Mr. Knight.) I can’t say anything about the argument that we think we’re smarter than God, because I cannot measure the intelligence of such a being. As for his claims that there is a multi-generational conspiracy to fake science about gay people and then use them as a wedge to drive in socialism, extraordinray claims require extraordinary evidence, Mr. Knight. Start with falsifying Kinsey and work your way forward, in peer-reviewed and impeccable science, and then do the work and more impeccable science to conclude that LGBT issues are really a cover for socialism. Time’s wasting, Mr. Knight. You can present your results to my descendants.
Last for tonight, when confronted with the problem of everyone else around you speaking and writing unintelligible gibberish, recall that at least you're not trying to communicate to your descendants in a language they don't even know how to read.
Less happily, Diana Wynne Jones may be aproaching the end, so much that she has decided to abandon her chemotherapy. And, yes, Rue McClanahan died at 76, removing another “Golden Girl” and Gary Coleman died at 42, giving the Dead Pool (and Avenue Q) a few things to chew over while they await their next residents.
Out in the world today, a novel approach to de-stressing police people and learning new skills - a Zen Buddhist retreat, which turns their heirarchy upside down and gives them new exercises and disciplines to work with.
We may have mentioned this before, but if we did, enjoy it again - a party created by a comedian that promised lots and said they wouldn't fulfill any of them has won the most seats on a city council. Well, we have always claimed that if the people had a candidate that they knew was being truthful, even if they were promising the worst of outcomes, they’d get elected because they told the truth.
Still undeterred from trying to pass a bill criminalizing LGBT sex, a Ugandan pastor describes what he thinks homosexuals do behind closed doors, invoking scat play as something that every gay man does (among other things).
Israel is preparing itself for another ship headed for Gaza, and the Prime Minister claims this one won't get by, either. Bets on whether or not we get realy good video from this particular incident? (To their credit, Israel has offered to have the ship unload in a nearby port, inspect the cargo, and send it on.) That way, we can avoid accusations that the media misrepresented the true purpose of the aid flotilla, taking the peace people at their word instead of assuming they had a hidden agenda based on their associations. (Hey, where have I heard that before?)
New data leaked from a defector in Burma/Myanmar suggests the ruling junta are developing a program to deliver long-range nuclear-tipped missiles.
The United States administration is quietly trying to have funding for training Iraqi security personnel reinserted into a defense authorization bill after the chair of the Armed Services Committee cut it out, claiming Iraq is able to start funding their own security training.
Domestically, The Paper of Record has infographics about many aspects of the oil crisis. And then there are the people who know what its like and can picture it in vivid detail. Finally, no imagination needed - this is what birds caught in an oil spill look like. And some news organizations are seeing the whole deadly truth. I would not be surprised if someone finally decided to require that oil rigs be able to defeat disasters and spills at the depth they were planning on drilling before they would be allowed to drill at that depth. If that means decreased domestic supply and a push toward renewables and other forms to make up the gap, happy consequence. The President has canceled trips to stay home and keep his fingers on the pulse of the oil.
Those working on the spill and with dispersants are complaining of sickness symptoms. Perhaps because they had to go out and handle things without protective gear and safety precautions? Which makes the cleanup effort kind of like how the whole thing started in the first place?
And financially, BP's shares took a drubbing, but apparently not enough to stop a shareholder payout of $10 billion USD, which tells me they’ve still got money they should be throwing at the problem. Just wish that the Dems would kick the Republicans in the shins, the knees, and then the genitals for obstructing the measure to raise liability caps and pass it anyway.
As we can clearly see, letting the free market handle this is a losing prospect now, and the historical precedent from Exxon-Mobil is not good either, so why don’t we just say “To hell with it. You make no profit until this is cleaned up. All of your avilable resources will be diverted to cleaning this up, and then when we’re done, you will smile for the cameras as we institute and enforce regulations that will make sure this never happens again.” And anyone howling about a government takeover gets the smile that says, “Are you siding with the people who deliberately circumvented safety protocols and created this disaster, or do you want to fix things and make sure it doesn’t happen again? Choose wisely.”
The Governor of Arizona and the President squared off on the Papers Please law, border security and immigration, and did not find much for common ground on how to tackle the problem. The CW is that the Governor is trying to look tough to get re-elected, and the President is looking to make progress on the actual issue.
In opinions today, Mr. Rove starts the festivities by claiming the voters will find all about the intended consequences of the health care bill as Medicare gets cut and corporations affected by taxes and requirement merrily pass the costs on to their consumers and employees, raising premiums and/or dumping coverage completely. And this is somehow the government’s fault for enacting the legislation that the corporations have decided they don’t want to pay for. Some days, I do wish there were an enforcement mechanism that would stop corproations from passing on new costs like this to their consumers in the form of higher prices, premiums, and reduced coverage. Other days, I wonder how such a mechanism would be perverted.
Mr. Hanson waxes poetic about all the failures of European democratic socialism, in multi-country bailouts, lower population rates, atheism, freeloading on the United States military might, and lower worker productivity, and then wonders why the United States wants to follow that model of being eceonmically weak, tolerant of people he thinks we shouldn’t be, and overrun by religious zealots. Mr. Barone thinks the President's Chicago Way means endless raids of the private sector for treasure and lots of crony capitalism for those fortunate enough to be politically connected. And Mr. Elder uses the U.S. response to Israel's flotilla fracas to recite his litany of "Things This President Did Wrong" (which are conveniently all the things I don't like) and complain that the world is more dangerous now that Barack Obama is in charge.
Mr. Thomas crows about what he sees as the melting credibility of the climate change people, based on, wait for it, cooler possible temperatures and the fact that most of the non-scientists are choosing to believe what they see and feel now, rather than giving a thought to what the short- and long-term future might hold. There’s also a dig in there about how global warming would have done better if it had attempted to say we should stop our dependence on foreign energy and encouraged both more domestic drilling (taking up the Palinesque cry of blaming environmentalists for causing the Deepwater Horizons disaster because they forced these oil companies to drill and explore further offshore) and new energy sources. Oh, wait, they were. Fact-check, aisle four, please.
Last in the opinions, a pairing about social morality and religion in America. First up, Mr. Kuhner complains about the constant media/Hollywood war on Christianity, starting with comedy Central’s “JC”, a cartoon that aims to portray a Jesus that’s more human (and rebellious) than divine, and then spends a lot of time going through the “double standard” for Islam, because CC’s execs axed Trey and Matt’s send-up of Mohammed out of fear while letting them portray a deviant Jesus, before skipping lightly on the “liberals hate Christians and want to eradicate morality” at the end (more on that in the other column). Apparently, they were afraid of Muslim violence, while Christian violence just doesn’t happen. Shouldn’t that be a positive point for the Christians, that there’s really no danger of violent reaction to satire, and that, so long as you’re not gay, believe something other than Christianity, or an abortion provider, there’s no real danger of religiously-motivated violence from Christians? Mr. Kuehner can’t accept this position, though, and so he needs enemies. Hollywood and Islam are the easy ones to poke at, because Islam is still working out the issues of violence and empire that Christianity supposedly got over a few centuries ago, and because Hollywood thrives on selling you things you want to see and things hat will shock you. If only the whole world decided they were going to be his particular brand of Christians, we wouldn’t have this problem. At all.
So column two is from Mr. Knight, who complains about our sexual morality, the columnists and pundits feel like they're "smarter than God" about what appropriate human sexuality is. He does his argument no favors by accusing polls in favor of removing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell of having a uniform liberal bias, but settles finally into his argument that humans who believe that LGBT should be fully accepted, instead of held at arms’ length and routinely scolded for being deviants and told in no uncertain terms that their bodies and souls will rot in hell forever for being deviants and that repentance and heterosexuality are always just a choice away, are saying they’re smarter than the God who designed the bodies male and female and intended them to be married. Such hubris, naturally, cannot end well. He then returns to doing his argument injustice by claiming all studies starting with Kinsey that indicate that gay is natural are junk, manufactured, and frauds to push an agenda, the tip of the spear of socialist attacks against the founding Judeo-Christian values that Keep Us Safe and Preserve Our Liberty and Freedom. Plus, ex-gay people! All the ex-gay people! They’re being ignored! (Because scientifically, ex-gayness doesn’t work. You can’t claim that science has to be followed rigorously and then shirk when those conclusions say you’re wrong, Mr. Knight.) I can’t say anything about the argument that we think we’re smarter than God, because I cannot measure the intelligence of such a being. As for his claims that there is a multi-generational conspiracy to fake science about gay people and then use them as a wedge to drive in socialism, extraordinray claims require extraordinary evidence, Mr. Knight. Start with falsifying Kinsey and work your way forward, in peer-reviewed and impeccable science, and then do the work and more impeccable science to conclude that LGBT issues are really a cover for socialism. Time’s wasting, Mr. Knight. You can present your results to my descendants.
Last for tonight, when confronted with the problem of everyone else around you speaking and writing unintelligible gibberish, recall that at least you're not trying to communicate to your descendants in a language they don't even know how to read.
