Another compilation of news, stupidity, and brilliance - 13 July 2010

A reminder from the We Are Not Unbiased Department - Perspective Matters. What side you are on will influence your view.

Something for you to chew on as you go through today’s postings - when the avowed atheist has cancer, do you pray for him? And for what?

If philosophy is not your thing, then perhaps turn your eyes and brains to the nascent jousting movement, fueled by persons who want to see the medieval sport, in full contact, full plate and possible death glory, become an arena sport in America, with sponsorships, tournaments, and prizes. As opposed to their European kin, who prefer to fit their lances with balsa at the tips so as to spread the energy, shatter easily, and soften the blow.

Or perhaps you’d rather laugh at the Rooster Booster swimsuit, designed to guard against shrinkage and provide a little padding for those who want to show off their goods even after a swim.

The Dead Pool collected George Steinbrenner, long-time owner of the New York Yankees baseball franchise and perhaps one of the single most-hated men in American Sport, at 80 years of age. LeBron James, the Ohio State Buckeyes, and the USC Trojans might all now be fighting to move into that spot, or perhaps one of Steinbrenner’s legacies will be to catapault the entire New York Yankees club into the coveted spot. That said, Steinbrenner will hopefully enjoy the company of Bob Sheppard, the public address announcer who also perished this week at 99 years of age.

Out in the world today, building for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi is destroying schools and displacing the poor residents of the buildings that were already there. Not that they’re important to the government - they’re a nuisance at best, it seems, to police and the builders, and a “security risk” only as long as they need to be moved. In case, you know, the princes see poverty and suffering and are them moved to become enlightened.

Elsewhere, security theather at its finest - the United States TSA is demanding to be able to screen passengers on flights that are flying over United States airspace to a destination in another country, and thinks that they have the authority to deny passengers on their “no-fly” list from being able to board in another country.

Attempting to drive a wedge between the President and his top commander, The Washington Times devotes an article to how much General Petraeus was okay with saying "Islamic extremists" in a past administration, one that encouraged such usage, and what sort of problems he will allegedly have in adapting to the new ban.

Speaking of making mountains out of molehills, the Press Secretary attempted to dismiss a statement made by the NASA director about the priority task of reaching out to Muslim countries as a misstatement. Actually reading the statement, however, it seems pretty clear to me that the director was saying that NASA, as a scientific organization, has a duty to encourage the study of science around the world, especially in places where the sciences are being curtailed because of religion now. Whomever misconstrued it as “NASA’s mission is to reach out to the Muslim world” is reaching pretty far into the hat to pull out a squirrel (and not even a flying one at that).

And finally, a new ship sails for Gaza from Libya, intended to be a blockade-runner.

Domestically, the Federal Trade Commission is pointedly asking states to draft and pass new legislation that will curb the excess of debt-collection lawsuits based on flimsy or nonexistent evidence clogging up the court sysrem, based on the volume of complaints they have received about shady debt-collectors pressuring and then suing people who don’t owe anything and aren’t legally obligated to pay any of the “debts” they allegedly ran up.

As BP claims to be getting closer to an actual solution that won't release more oil into the Gulf, pictures of the damage already done. So they’d better hope that the new cap they're stress-testing now works like it should and that the integrity of the pipe holds down the line.

Having had their first moratorium struck down in court, the Interior Department issued a new moratorium against new offshore drilling. Anyone that already has soemthing in place, of course, can keep going happily. We’d like to see it required that they demonstrate they can actually fix a deep water disaster before they are allowed to continue, but there isn’t enough support in the Congress to do something like that.

The debt commission created by the President to look at the task of paying for increased spending says they have to look at all options, including the politicallt unpopular ones, and that it’s unlikely what they come up with will be liked by all. Depending on what they actually recommend, we can see wehther they were serious about looking at everything.

A GOP gubernatorial candidate in Colorado was hung out to dry when a significant part of his body of work was discoverd to be plagarized from somone else. You see, these things, we call them databases and The Internets, and you can use them to cheat, and we can use them to find out that you’ve been cheating.

As we slowly turn up the heat on politics, predictions abound about how the party in power will do at all levels of government. Everyone seems convinced that Republicans will gain, possibly to the point of controlling interests, in this election. Some are even looking farther afield, trying to capitalize on criticizing the President now now to drum up interest in possibly trying to take his place in the next Presidential general election.

A Minnesota group believes that they've found enough felons who should be denied their voting rights that voted in the last election for Al Franken that had the race been accurate, Mr. Franken would have lost. Missing from their report is how many potential felonious voters voted for his opponent. If you’re going to be fair, Minnesota Majority, you have to look at both sides - if you can find 300+ felons who voted for Mr. Franken, then surely you can find quite a few felons who voted illegally for his opponent.

Tom Corbett, GOP candidate for Governor in Pennsylvania, is an idiot. He believes that people on unemployment insurance are simply lazy and not choosing to go back to the plethora of jobs that are available, ignoring the truth that there are about five applicants for each position, and totally not figuring out that if people were staying on unemployment instead of going back to work, it’s because work doesn’t pay as well. Maybe someone has to up the ante of their offer to get people to come work for them, instead of trying to get the desperate with part-time no benefit minimum wage work. For those that can afford to sit on it for a while, anyway. Accusing the unemployed of deliberately not trying to get back to work shows a fundamental idiocy about the wrokings and just-barely-enough amount of unemployment people get each month.

And last out, the NAACP will take up a resolution condemning the Tea Party movement for their racism. After hearing this, one of the backers of the usually-white crowds, a Brendan Steinhauser of FreedomWorks, the Dick Armey astroturf group that refuses to disclose their donors, said "I just don't see racism in the tea party movement...I would hope that [the NAACP] would appreciate the fact that the tea party movement has a lot in common with the civil rights movement". Now, as was pointed out, being majority-white does not by itself mean they’re racists, but some of the remarks and signs at the gatherings indicate that racists certainly find good things in the Tea Party. Please to be cueing up the Head-Desk Chorus, accompanied this time by this handy slideshow of race-related statements and signs flown at tea party gatherings. Aaaaand, go. *bang* *bang* *bang*

If they’re not racists, though, at the very least, one can tar them with the brush of making inappropriate comparisons, of the center-rightist Barack Obama to Vladimir Lenin (under the heading of "Marxist Socialism") and Adolf Hitler, all because they all have the slogan of wanting to bring change. The Tea Party in question doesn’t apologize for the message, or the pictures. Now it’s up to the other Tea Partiers to disavow them, that is, if they don’t believe in the message. If they do, though, I’m betting we’ll see all sorts of signs just like it, especially at town hall meetings that are going to happen as the Congresscritters hit the campaign trail. Keep your eyes peeled.

In technology, MIT scientists have developed a process that creates a lot of acoustic fiber, which can then be used to monitor very tiny sounds in the environment, or potentially generate those sounds. If hooked up to a sufficiently powerful amp, one’s clothes could generate sound or record the sound around you.

Additionaly, new research may indicate some types of synaethesia can be trained.

Oh, and This year's January-June was the global hottest on record, because "the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect", and...wait. If the climate change deniers were right, wouldn’t that mean this was supposed to be cool or normal temperature? (Well, we’ll wait for them to get finished harping on how much the East Anglia e-mails indicate all science from there is corrupted, despite several investigations that indicate no wrongdoing.)

Into opinions, the place where Mr. Cooper can fearlessly accuse the administration of botching an oil spill response and assaulting Louisiana's economy, because of moratoria, which makes corporations pick up their ball and go home, mandated breaks during night work, regulations against long-term damage that he considers stupid, and the fact that the President hasn’t been talking about it, all day, every day, to the exclusion of everything else. Because they don’t have any time or energy to devote to all the reasons why the federal government might not be able to jump in and save the day, or to acknowledge the fact that a President is expected to walk and chew gum at the same time, or even to devote anything to what obstacles BP might be throwing in teh government’s way to prevent them from being able to do things well.

Mr. Barnes hopes for a third way out of debt reduction, away from increased taxes, and away from the privatization of Social Security that he pines for, into a scheem that would control the amount of Social Security benefit increases to retirees based on their other income, with lower-income retirees receiving the most generous increases, and those with other income seeing their increases dropped toward the rate of inflation. Mr. Rield, instead, chooses to blame federal spending as the major cause of the defecit and declare that the previous administrator's tax cuts are merely a scapegoat.

Mr. Sowell, on the other hand, accuses the administration of being so anti-business that instead of spending the stimulus money, businesses are socking it away in investments like gold because they're uncertain as to what will happen next. Because apparently you don’t know what additional costs Washington is going to impose on you if you’re a business and you hire new people. Or, more accurately, “...temporary workers usually don’t get health insurance or other benefits, and working existing employees overtime doesn’t add to the cost of their benefits”. Employers aren’t willing to pony up the cost of the benefits to hire on new people. There’s where the system is broken. It’s not some “anti-business” kick in the government, it’s that employer-based health insurance, pensions, and other benefit systems have become broken in this economy. So if we had, say, a single-payer health insurance system, I’d bet a lot of money would mysteriously free itself up for hiring and investment, as a major portion of employee expenses would be shouldered by the entity best positioned to provide good service to everyone.

More politically, Messrs. Klukowski and Blackwell accuse the Obama DOJ of a serious dereliction of duty in dropping the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and call for heads to roll. There is one (okay, several, but one major one) problem with all of that, though - the previous administration's DOJ were the ones to actually drop the case. The rest is about the star witness’s close ties to the GOP and other places that would really love for him to be able to invoke scandal against the Obama DOJ.

Mr. Bluey wants to lay the fault of so many recess appointments squarely at the feet of the Democrats, believing that whatever opposition Republicans put up, it couldn’t possibly hold in front of the Democratic majorities, right? Excepting that a single Senator can, for reasons they do not have to disclose, place a hold on the appointment of anyone. The only way that could guarantee swift passage of all appointments and hearings would be for the Democrats to control the Senate in its entirety, 100-0. And given the Republican track record on legislation (the permanent filibuster, aka The Tarantino), it seems reasonable to blame them for at least some of the delay in getting appointments through, or for turning those appointments into proxy fights on legislation and issues.

Speaking of appointments, the WSJ insists that Elena Kagan recuse herself from hearing any arguments on a Constitutional challenge to the health care law, based on the likelihood that she expressed an opinion as Solicitor General on the matter, and thus would not be impartial.

In other places, Mr. Morris and Ms. McGann lament the end of the United Kingdom where a government can basically push through its agenda until it loses a confidence vote and has to dissolve and call elections, based on new possible referenda that would give Parliament the vote to dissolve itself, requiring a 2/3 vote, and to use ranked choice voting instead of first past the post in elections, a move that would likely give smaller parties more seats by winning in people’s second and third place choices.

And on other themes, Mr. Kaufman is up in arms about young children being trained to fight, wrestle, and fire weapons when it's a Muslim-affiliated group doing the training, never mind that the Boy Scouts, the organization he compares them to, and their Cub Scout cousins offer programs and consider it appropriate for young boys to learn how to fight, wrestle, and fire weapons. I would guess both organizations are doing so responsibly with an eye toward safety, proper technique, and discipline, while also hoping to impart their religious values onto the children. (The Boy Scouts of America are most assuredly a Christian organization and offer perhaps the barest of fig leaves toward other Abrahamic religions.) When you want to paint The Other as The Bloodthirsty Religion, however, you have to play up as many dodgy connections as you can find, though. Like supposed secret Iranian agents going to Venezuela then coming to America through Mexico. The evidence? Tatoos in Farsi and Arabic.

Last for tonight, rice paddy art in Japan, a trend that seems to be increasing every time we see the annual photos.

Special Comment: Prager - Your Diversity Is Not Welcome Here

Touching on an issue that, while I may not ever send myself or students through it again, is still important to me - education, Mr. Prager presents his ideal speech from a high school principal to his school, coming back from summer break. As with anything that warrants the Special Comment, let’s go through the exercise point by point.

1. First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white....And the only national identity this school will care about is American....We will end all ethnicity-, race- and non-American nationality-based celebrations....This includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion, sexual orientation or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness.
   
   Your clubs will be based on interests and passions, not blood, ethnic, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism...


In translation: I do not care who you are, nor do I care about your heritage. The fact that you are here means you will assimilate to what I believe to be American culture. LGBT students, you will find no support groups here from me. Minority students, you are not allowed to band together and try to educate us about privilege and the way it colors our experiences. Nobody here will celebrate great people who are non-white, unless they happen to be someone we have appropriated from their context and made safe for us, or events that are important to people of non-WASP heritage. My students, I intend fully to kill any hope you might have of understanding your history and of experiencing the very real diversity of culture that is America. I intend to leave you woefully unprepared for the real world.


2. Second, I am uninterested in whether English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English language has united America’s citizens for over 200 years, and it will unite us at this school. It is one of the indispensable reasons this country of immigrants has always come to be one country. And if you leave this school without excellent English language skills, I would be remiss in my duty to ensure that you will be prepared to successfully compete in the American job market. We will learn other languages here -- it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English -- but if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English, this is not your school.


Translated: You will assimilate to my culture by learning my language. Language is important to culture, and as I have already said that I intend to kill any cultural experience you get outside the confines of what I deem to be appropriate, it naturally follows that I must relegate your native language to the dustbin. I do not care whether English is your second or third language, nor do I care that this school might be the first time that you are exposed to the language with any intensity. You will be fluent in my language, my culture, and my way of thinking before you leave, or I will declare you a failure and require you to take your indoctrination again until it sticks. I will, however, make token gestures toward learning your languages and cultures by offering rudimentary courses in your languages - enough to get around as a tourist, but not enough that someone might appreciate the language and the cultures that developed it.


3. Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor, everything in this school will reflect learning’s elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in our society dress more formally for Hollywood events than for church or school. These people have their priorities backward. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.


Translated: Having crushed your ability to express yourself in clubs and in speaking your native tongues, I will now stop you from expressing yourself through your dress. You will not be allowed to make political statements, cultural statements, or any kind of statement other than the one I have chosen for you, one born of my beliefs about what you should be. Any attempt that you make at creativity in your dress will be ruthlessly quashed under the dress code. I will look out upon you, and I will see a sea of conformity, of pleasant inoffensiveness, and I will be heartened. I do not tolerate individuality here at school. Get used to it.


4. Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school’s property -- whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events. If you can’t speak without using the f-word, you can’t speak. By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal Communications Commission, plus epithets such as “Nigger,” even when used by one black student to address another black, or “bitch,” even when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few your age to instinctively distinguish between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene.


Translated: Rather than teach you the manner of usage and allow you to explore why certain words have come to be obscene, the privilege of a select minority, or otherwise deemed offensive, I will simply ban you from saying any of them. Having already regulated what language you speak, I will now regulate how you can speak it. When I am finished with you, you will sound like me, with all of your ethnic constructions, portmanteaus, neologisms, and patterns of speaking erased so that I may present you as a properly assimilated cog in the machine to your new corporate masters once you are finished. In doing so, I hope to be able to instill into you the value system that I follow and override your own, so that you will naturally cultivate to my point of view and be unable to find the words or the manner to contradict me without running into banned speech and discipline consequences.


5. Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school, self-esteem will be attained in only one way -- the way people attained it until decided otherwise a generation ago -- by earning it. One immediate consequence is that there will be one valedictorian, not eight.


Translated: I believe you are too soft, raised by a nation of whiners who prize feelings and equal rewards for those who participate equally. This is unacceptable, and may lead you down the road to Marxism, socialism, Communism, or just general liberal behavior. Americans believe that there must be one winner and an army of losers. Only the winner is important - all others must be relegated to second class. I will teach you to be cutthroat, to do what it takes to win, to attack each other and fight over a supply of rewards that I will keep artificially low, to see each other not as companions and fellow humans, but competitors aiming to take your piece of life, sub-humans who must be crushed and subjugated, their pieces taken, and then broken so they cannot challenge you again. You will justify this by believing that because you took it from them, you obviously deserved it more than they did. I will ensure that you are ready for what I perceive the workplace to be, ready to take on office politics, backstabbing, and climing the corporate ladder by any means necessary.


6. Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda. No more time will devoted to scaring you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue. There will be no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or not heterosexual or not Christian. We will have failed if any one of you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself inordinately lucky -- to be alive and to be an American.


Translation: I believe in a curriculum that teaches to standardized tests without actually measuring student progress. I am not content removing your ability to speak, dress, or otherwise express yourself politically and culturally, for that still allows you to possibly express yourself within the confines of class or your teachers. I will thus remove this last avenue of expression, debate, learning, and awareness by forbidding your teachers to teach anything that is not safe and approved by white culture. I will forbid you from discussing the current events of our times, and I will stop you from being able to hear any alternative opinions to my WASP perspective on morality, ethics, and how minorities have been treated over the course of history. Especially in sex, which I think is icky and should only be talked about once you’re safely married and you want to have children. LGBT students, I hate you with every fiber of my being. I will do everything I can to stop you from feeling like you are normal people with normal feelings and will encourage the bullies and attackers in your classes to make you feel inferior, wrong, and a deviant. If they use offensive language in my presence, I might slap them with token discipline to keep up appearances, but I will steadfastly do what I can to overlook anything that might happen to you because you are LGBT.

I will not tolerate opinions other than my own, and I will forbid you from ever expressing them in my school, and I will do my best to make sure you are so overloaded with boring core classes that you won’t have time or desire to do anything else. Enjoy your new Hell.

And because he can’t leave well enough alone without a stinger on the end, as if we didn’t get the point that he thinks our students are all stupid, lazy, whiners with victim mentalities who refuse to assimilate into the superior culture, here’s the last paragraph.


7. Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you.


No need for translation here, just one thing to say. Get plugged, bunghole. Or, possibly: FUCK. OFF.