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Good morning, everyone and their perspective. It’s almost a cliche, but just about every great project has a stack of proposed or actual rejections attached to it. I guess the bit about the ratio of inspiration to perspiration isn’t all that off, as much as we’d like it to be.
Argentina sticks the landing on their vault into the Century of the Fruitbat, becoming the first Latin American country to legalize gay and lesbian marriage, and allowing the newly married couples to adopt children as well. Yaaay! Hopefully we'll get sanity in our own marriage rules.
And for Thoughtscream Media and others - Slate has found that long-form journalism does indeed have a place in our digital times, by deliberately catering not to the masses, but trying to cultivate the readership that would want to read long-form pieces, and mandating that employees take four to six weeks of their year off to produce at least one in-depth piece about a driving interest of theirs. Those articles are apparently the most popular pieces on the magazine. Perhaps the populace does want more than just bickering heads, aggregated sound bites, and rapid-fire material. (Of course, if they do, then I’m doing these posts entirely All Wrong to capture their appeal. Probably even the Special Comments aren’t long enough to capture that essay-reading audience.)
Out in the world today, A senior Obama administration accused al-Qaeda and al-Shabbab, an affiliated group in Africa, of racism against Africans, because the groups recruit Africans to go kill each other, but never promote them to higher level operations, and that they think Africans are easier to corrupt because of their poverty. Well, if it inspires the right kind of rage to get the terrorists out, then it’s a brilliant rhetorical move. We’ll see if it works.
Conflicting stories abound regarding an Iranian scientist who disappeared from Iran and only recently reappeared at the Pakistani embassy, asking to go home. Whether kidnapped, or bribed, or paid, or defected, the three-edged sword is at it again. I don’t know if we’ll ever know what the real truth is.
The Pentagon wants $33 billion dollars in supplemental spending to their current budget, claiming a need for that money to keep financing both ongoing land wars in Asia.
Domestically, take a look at the lives of the people that Republicans are destroying by refusing to extend unemployment insurance through this crisis. So they look like lazy people who are living on the dole because they want to? They’re putting in lots of job applications, only to find they’re competing against everyone else in the country for a spot. And with pessimistically-revised projections about the economy, it only becomes more important that we keep supporting the people who are trying to find work and work toward finding some way that will reduce the cost of employment of people. (Here’s a hint: Benefits cost at least as much as salary if not more. An employer who only had to pay salary, and perhaps a little bit of benefits, will likely hire someone else with the moeny that was just freed up.)
Richard Cheney became more of a cyborg, having a heart pump installed to assist his own as he enters a period of "increasing congestive heart failure".
Finding whatever ways they can to complain, Republican Representatives took issue with spending stimulus dollars on signs that indicate projects are funded by stimulus dollars for a cost of some millions out of the billions already distributed. Democrats, when pressured, fired back about tax cuts from the last administration or wryly quipped that they were glad the Republicans were noticing all the projects - and the jobs they create.
More sanely, Republicans objected to provisions in the financial reform bill that they claim are not related to reform but are instead gifts to Democratic constituencies such as unions and minorities, such as allowing unions to use the votes available in their pension plans and establishing offices at Treasury to encourage the hiring of more minorities and women in federal agencies. Perhaps the most telling argument comes from Senator Corker on the establishment of the consumer protection agency for financial products: “This may sound a little far-fetched, but you can have the wrong person in this position - there’s no board, there’s really no check and balance - that you can imagine could use this organization to try to create social justice in the financial system,” he said. Add “social justice” to “empathy” as things that at least some Republicans and conservatives thing are useless or dangerous things for government employees to have or work for. More on that in opinions, where the Dean of Beck University sticks his foot in his mouth sufficiently far that you can see his toes wiggling out of his rectum.
In technology, gay men and lesbians appear to use social networking sites in higher concentrations than average. Wonder why that might be... oh, yes, considering how easily they’re denied the ability to socialize with like-minded people in their physical lives, due to lack of venues and the still very real possibility that violence might be done to them if they came out, it seems a pretty natural fit that they would use social networking tools in greater quantities, because that might be the only way they find or interact with a community that understands and accepts them.
Social media may also be useful in tracking the spread of influenza and other disease outbreaks, assuming the watching engine is properly tuned to the right keywords and phrases to look for.
Motorola-based Android phones may have a security measure in place that detonates and renders the phone completely unbootable should someone try to mod specific parts of the phone's software. Now, the Droid platform is supposed to be founded on openness, so having someone pull this routine seems antithetical to the idea. Motorola claims that the phone will just boot straight into recovery mode if it loads unauthorized boot software, and that once reinstalled, things work as normal.
Science offers more studies indicating meditation helps focus the mind, increase attention span, and sharpen the senses, electrical fields applied to the brain help influence its activity, so soon we’ll see advertisements that electrically pulse so as to simtulate our brain to buy their prod...what do you mean, they're demoing billboards that scan the person passing by to tailer their ads to their gender and age?
Into opinions we roll, where Mr. Carroll channels Yogi Berra on climate legislation, claiming there’s a new scheme afoot, this time cap and ban rather than cap and trade. Mr. Cheeser has no such qualms, believing that the public is reacting in the same way as the town does to the boy who cried wolf on environmental issues, despite there being a rather large wolf staring them in the face. and that’s apparently okay.
The Slacktivist points out that we can solve lots of our unemployment problems and improve our creaking infrastructure with some targeted spending, if only the people who faint at the word "spending" would stop focusing on the word and start focusing on the effects of what happens when your infrastructure crumbles as millions of unemployed people look on. Yet another Works Progress Administration possibility. Why not? Train people to be journeypersons at infrastructure trades, and spend the cash needed to upgrade the infrastructure, and build yourself a better mousetrap. Two problems, one solution.
Mr. Rove indicates his greatest mistake was not combating the idea thet the previous administrator deliberately deceived America into the Iraq conflict. He starts by noting the complicity of Democrats in the conflict - they voted for it, after all, so they must have believed the intelligence reports, too. And the commissions found no intentional lying going on, so clearly it was just a mistake. One that has turned out exceedingly well, but a mistake. There’s a sleight-of-mind going on there, though. Mr. Rove may believe there was no intentional major deception, but all the minor deceptions still add up to the course of action that was taken, on a nonexistent justification. And researching the timelines, there were several statements made by the weapons inspectors on the ground that there were no WMD in Iraq. The administration chose to believe, and may have had a hand in creating, a report that was eventually found to be fabricated, as their justification for invasion. They based it on a lie. And in doing so, they lied. Repeatedly.
Staying on the military theme, Mr. Gaffeney, Jr. is up in arms that the Obama administration has not immediately approved the production of an AMERICAN MADE C-17 airlift plane, and warns of dire consequences if we get our capapbilities from Airbus, a corporation based in Europe, or Antonov, a Russian corporation. Because contracting out means that we have to deal with “hostile foreign workers and suppliers for equipment so vital to our national security”, which would mean they could cripple us if they went on strike!...for realz! Discounting the already massive military-industrial complex which Mr. Gaffney, Jr. is fawning all over and that eisenhower warned against, does he think that all the parts and pieces for our military aircraft are all made completely here in the United States, with raw materials mined from the U.S., refined in the U.S. using only United States citizens and companies based solely in the U.S? But facts are inconvenient when you want to paint he Commander in chief as someone who wants to make America stop being the world’s only military superpower and is actively hostile to keeping the military properly supplied.
Mr. von Spakovsky remins dogged in his pusuit of blaming the Obama administration for what happened with the New Black Panther Party case, starting with the old claims made by someone who wasn’t there and didn’t actually witness what was said or done, and then complaining that after the previous administration dropped the criminal case, the current administration is at fault for not throwing the book at the defendents to force injunctions and things. Also, apparently, the Holder DOJ has many skeletons in their closet about suppsed beliefs that no civil rights case will ever be brought against black people.
And then there’s the pastry competition. Mr. Williams tries to make the cut, but since this article is a cut-and-paste of his previous "the economy is a zero-sum game, government spending is always wrong, and FDR prolonged the Depression, not helped defeat it" articles, I have to pass over him. Some new material would be nice, honestly.
At the bronze level, Mr. Stossel believes stupid law enforcememnt is a consequence of having too many laws, effectively pointing out the stupidity of “zero-tolerance” policies and those that enforce them, but choosing not to pick the low-hanging fruit in favor of trying to argue that the mere presence of laws is too much and we should start rolling them back up in droves.
Up on the silver level, Mr. Hanson accuses Eric Holder of being a politicized, race-baiting Attorney General and a hypocrite that should resign his position, and Barack Obama of admitting Bush was right, assuming that the President could just order Guantanamo closed (even after the opposition stripped out any funding for doing so) and of Eric Holder making all sorts of racial comments in an administration full of minority appointees and a Supreme Court justice that’s a minority. “You’ve got your minority faces,” says Mr. Hanson, “what else could you want?”
But taking home the prize tonight is Glenn Beck, promoting the gospel of Republican Jesus, a Jesus that didn't advocate for social justice, that doesn't free the oppressed, and that demands that his followers save themselves, pull themselves up by their bootstraps without reliance or assistance from others, and give no assistance to anyone else who might need their help. All those things that Beck believes, Jesus disproves within the Foundatinoal Writings, and the first apologists, including Paul, pretty much say that Beck is wrong in his interpretation. I wonder why he continues to be considered a respectable figure in his circles.
Last for tonight, your newest parental paranoia panic, namely teenagers supposedly using audio files to achieve altered states. And apparently the dealer, iDoser, is using someone else's stuff without abiding by the license restrictions, original available at that link, along with the iDoser stuff available for the free software they're stealing from, if you're okay with using a place like The Pirate Bay. Thanks muchly to![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
hybridelephant.myopenid.com for pointing this out.
Argentina sticks the landing on their vault into the Century of the Fruitbat, becoming the first Latin American country to legalize gay and lesbian marriage, and allowing the newly married couples to adopt children as well. Yaaay! Hopefully we'll get sanity in our own marriage rules.
And for Thoughtscream Media and others - Slate has found that long-form journalism does indeed have a place in our digital times, by deliberately catering not to the masses, but trying to cultivate the readership that would want to read long-form pieces, and mandating that employees take four to six weeks of their year off to produce at least one in-depth piece about a driving interest of theirs. Those articles are apparently the most popular pieces on the magazine. Perhaps the populace does want more than just bickering heads, aggregated sound bites, and rapid-fire material. (Of course, if they do, then I’m doing these posts entirely All Wrong to capture their appeal. Probably even the Special Comments aren’t long enough to capture that essay-reading audience.)
Out in the world today, A senior Obama administration accused al-Qaeda and al-Shabbab, an affiliated group in Africa, of racism against Africans, because the groups recruit Africans to go kill each other, but never promote them to higher level operations, and that they think Africans are easier to corrupt because of their poverty. Well, if it inspires the right kind of rage to get the terrorists out, then it’s a brilliant rhetorical move. We’ll see if it works.
Conflicting stories abound regarding an Iranian scientist who disappeared from Iran and only recently reappeared at the Pakistani embassy, asking to go home. Whether kidnapped, or bribed, or paid, or defected, the three-edged sword is at it again. I don’t know if we’ll ever know what the real truth is.
The Pentagon wants $33 billion dollars in supplemental spending to their current budget, claiming a need for that money to keep financing both ongoing land wars in Asia.
Domestically, take a look at the lives of the people that Republicans are destroying by refusing to extend unemployment insurance through this crisis. So they look like lazy people who are living on the dole because they want to? They’re putting in lots of job applications, only to find they’re competing against everyone else in the country for a spot. And with pessimistically-revised projections about the economy, it only becomes more important that we keep supporting the people who are trying to find work and work toward finding some way that will reduce the cost of employment of people. (Here’s a hint: Benefits cost at least as much as salary if not more. An employer who only had to pay salary, and perhaps a little bit of benefits, will likely hire someone else with the moeny that was just freed up.)
Richard Cheney became more of a cyborg, having a heart pump installed to assist his own as he enters a period of "increasing congestive heart failure".
Finding whatever ways they can to complain, Republican Representatives took issue with spending stimulus dollars on signs that indicate projects are funded by stimulus dollars for a cost of some millions out of the billions already distributed. Democrats, when pressured, fired back about tax cuts from the last administration or wryly quipped that they were glad the Republicans were noticing all the projects - and the jobs they create.
More sanely, Republicans objected to provisions in the financial reform bill that they claim are not related to reform but are instead gifts to Democratic constituencies such as unions and minorities, such as allowing unions to use the votes available in their pension plans and establishing offices at Treasury to encourage the hiring of more minorities and women in federal agencies. Perhaps the most telling argument comes from Senator Corker on the establishment of the consumer protection agency for financial products: “This may sound a little far-fetched, but you can have the wrong person in this position - there’s no board, there’s really no check and balance - that you can imagine could use this organization to try to create social justice in the financial system,” he said. Add “social justice” to “empathy” as things that at least some Republicans and conservatives thing are useless or dangerous things for government employees to have or work for. More on that in opinions, where the Dean of Beck University sticks his foot in his mouth sufficiently far that you can see his toes wiggling out of his rectum.
In technology, gay men and lesbians appear to use social networking sites in higher concentrations than average. Wonder why that might be... oh, yes, considering how easily they’re denied the ability to socialize with like-minded people in their physical lives, due to lack of venues and the still very real possibility that violence might be done to them if they came out, it seems a pretty natural fit that they would use social networking tools in greater quantities, because that might be the only way they find or interact with a community that understands and accepts them.
Social media may also be useful in tracking the spread of influenza and other disease outbreaks, assuming the watching engine is properly tuned to the right keywords and phrases to look for.
Motorola-based Android phones may have a security measure in place that detonates and renders the phone completely unbootable should someone try to mod specific parts of the phone's software. Now, the Droid platform is supposed to be founded on openness, so having someone pull this routine seems antithetical to the idea. Motorola claims that the phone will just boot straight into recovery mode if it loads unauthorized boot software, and that once reinstalled, things work as normal.
Science offers more studies indicating meditation helps focus the mind, increase attention span, and sharpen the senses, electrical fields applied to the brain help influence its activity, so soon we’ll see advertisements that electrically pulse so as to simtulate our brain to buy their prod...what do you mean, they're demoing billboards that scan the person passing by to tailer their ads to their gender and age?
Into opinions we roll, where Mr. Carroll channels Yogi Berra on climate legislation, claiming there’s a new scheme afoot, this time cap and ban rather than cap and trade. Mr. Cheeser has no such qualms, believing that the public is reacting in the same way as the town does to the boy who cried wolf on environmental issues, despite there being a rather large wolf staring them in the face. and that’s apparently okay.
The Slacktivist points out that we can solve lots of our unemployment problems and improve our creaking infrastructure with some targeted spending, if only the people who faint at the word "spending" would stop focusing on the word and start focusing on the effects of what happens when your infrastructure crumbles as millions of unemployed people look on. Yet another Works Progress Administration possibility. Why not? Train people to be journeypersons at infrastructure trades, and spend the cash needed to upgrade the infrastructure, and build yourself a better mousetrap. Two problems, one solution.
Mr. Rove indicates his greatest mistake was not combating the idea thet the previous administrator deliberately deceived America into the Iraq conflict. He starts by noting the complicity of Democrats in the conflict - they voted for it, after all, so they must have believed the intelligence reports, too. And the commissions found no intentional lying going on, so clearly it was just a mistake. One that has turned out exceedingly well, but a mistake. There’s a sleight-of-mind going on there, though. Mr. Rove may believe there was no intentional major deception, but all the minor deceptions still add up to the course of action that was taken, on a nonexistent justification. And researching the timelines, there were several statements made by the weapons inspectors on the ground that there were no WMD in Iraq. The administration chose to believe, and may have had a hand in creating, a report that was eventually found to be fabricated, as their justification for invasion. They based it on a lie. And in doing so, they lied. Repeatedly.
Staying on the military theme, Mr. Gaffeney, Jr. is up in arms that the Obama administration has not immediately approved the production of an AMERICAN MADE C-17 airlift plane, and warns of dire consequences if we get our capapbilities from Airbus, a corporation based in Europe, or Antonov, a Russian corporation. Because contracting out means that we have to deal with “hostile foreign workers and suppliers for equipment so vital to our national security”, which would mean they could cripple us if they went on strike!...for realz! Discounting the already massive military-industrial complex which Mr. Gaffney, Jr. is fawning all over and that eisenhower warned against, does he think that all the parts and pieces for our military aircraft are all made completely here in the United States, with raw materials mined from the U.S., refined in the U.S. using only United States citizens and companies based solely in the U.S? But facts are inconvenient when you want to paint he Commander in chief as someone who wants to make America stop being the world’s only military superpower and is actively hostile to keeping the military properly supplied.
Mr. von Spakovsky remins dogged in his pusuit of blaming the Obama administration for what happened with the New Black Panther Party case, starting with the old claims made by someone who wasn’t there and didn’t actually witness what was said or done, and then complaining that after the previous administration dropped the criminal case, the current administration is at fault for not throwing the book at the defendents to force injunctions and things. Also, apparently, the Holder DOJ has many skeletons in their closet about suppsed beliefs that no civil rights case will ever be brought against black people.
And then there’s the pastry competition. Mr. Williams tries to make the cut, but since this article is a cut-and-paste of his previous "the economy is a zero-sum game, government spending is always wrong, and FDR prolonged the Depression, not helped defeat it" articles, I have to pass over him. Some new material would be nice, honestly.
At the bronze level, Mr. Stossel believes stupid law enforcememnt is a consequence of having too many laws, effectively pointing out the stupidity of “zero-tolerance” policies and those that enforce them, but choosing not to pick the low-hanging fruit in favor of trying to argue that the mere presence of laws is too much and we should start rolling them back up in droves.
Up on the silver level, Mr. Hanson accuses Eric Holder of being a politicized, race-baiting Attorney General and a hypocrite that should resign his position, and Barack Obama of admitting Bush was right, assuming that the President could just order Guantanamo closed (even after the opposition stripped out any funding for doing so) and of Eric Holder making all sorts of racial comments in an administration full of minority appointees and a Supreme Court justice that’s a minority. “You’ve got your minority faces,” says Mr. Hanson, “what else could you want?”
But taking home the prize tonight is Glenn Beck, promoting the gospel of Republican Jesus, a Jesus that didn't advocate for social justice, that doesn't free the oppressed, and that demands that his followers save themselves, pull themselves up by their bootstraps without reliance or assistance from others, and give no assistance to anyone else who might need their help. All those things that Beck believes, Jesus disproves within the Foundatinoal Writings, and the first apologists, including Paul, pretty much say that Beck is wrong in his interpretation. I wonder why he continues to be considered a respectable figure in his circles.
Last for tonight, your newest parental paranoia panic, namely teenagers supposedly using audio files to achieve altered states. And apparently the dealer, iDoser, is using someone else's stuff without abiding by the license restrictions, original available at that link, along with the iDoser stuff available for the free software they're stealing from, if you're okay with using a place like The Pirate Bay. Thanks muchly to
hybridelephant.myopenid.com for pointing this out.
