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Good morning, everyone! It's always fascinating to peer into another culture and language to see what's new, what's cool, and what gets used. So, via Pink Tentacle, the 60 most popular words and phrases of Japan for 2010.
Have a look, as well, at A letter from one Bob Dylan to the Immigration and Nautraliztion Service to allow John Lennon and Yoko Ono to continue living in the United States, after the Nixon administration started deportation proceedings against them. To see how one should probably work immigration properly, look in on how Canada, and say, the province of Manitoba, treats immigration - seeking those with skills, offering them work and a path to citizenship, and preferring those people who have relatives in the area - and what do they get? Lots of well-adjusted immigrants and plenty more people who want to immigrate.
If you ever wanted to know how early bullying starts, and how minute the things can be, observe the following: a first-grade girl taking flak from boys in her classes for bringing a Star Wars water bottle to school. Now, anyone who thinks Star Wars is only for boys is deluding themselves, as there are a lot of women who both work on Star Wars and who love it. It's more like how the story of the rabbit with red wings ends up being a horrible Aesop about how conformity leads to happiness, instead of a story about how being who you are, including being different, leads to happiness. It's a case of Ponies.
Point being, if someone gives you or your kid guff about anything at all, the right response to those people is whatever equivalent of a pimp-slap and "English, motherf--ker! Do you speak it?!" you can think of. And some of those responses are damn clever - like an assortment of clowns to successfully mock the KKK, or a 91 year-old grandmother decked out to the nines in superhero gear, for example. (Speaking of, the Seattle area apparently has a lot of Super Heroes, not all of whom are known to the police) And with more and more people coming out at earlier ages, your prep time for the awesome may be shortened a bit more than you thought you had. So start thinking about your comebacks now. Especially if you need props. If it's teenagers, figuring out the core of the drama, and working through to find a way that everyone decides to drop the drama, is the way you might find a way to stop the bullying. (With teens, being egocentric and all, everything revolves around them and how they feel wronged, not necessarily how they're possibly being the one causing the drama.)
However, there are times when there are failures, such as when 79 countries say being gay shouldn't protect you from being killed without trial by your government, with 10 countries abstaining and 26 more not showing up for the vote. It's another tick mark in the long series of incidents where being QUILTBAG is reason for teasing, violence, harm, or the denial of legal rights. We wouldn't need things like Transgender Rememberance Day and other projects if we weren't obsessed with making sure that The Other is always at arm's length and properly In Their Place.
Although, in perhaps what might be the beginnings of a loosening, the current Bishop of Rome has said that the use of condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission from, say, male prostitutes, might be acceptable. Not much said about, y'know, couples in a committed relationship or anyone else, for that example.
Finally, a clear case of "Nobody has read the book" - Brave New World is removed from a high school curriciulum after a complaint that it portrays First Nations people insensitively. Because it throws about the word "savage" routinely, and because the place where the non test-tube babies are born is called the Reservation. Perhaps if they had read the book, they might notice the context and tone of the book, which is against the society that calls natural-born people savages. *sigh* Would someone please grow a spine, or at least have a process in place where the people who do know what they're talking about have a chance to point out that the people who don't are, in fact, clueless?
Out in the world today, ire and outrage at the covering of a protected environmental site in Malta with sand so as to film for an HBO series. When pressed as to how they allowed such a thing to happen, the observing authority claimed it wasn't feasible to have an observer on all the filming sites to make sure the environmental areas were protected. Which kind of defeats the point of declaring it an environmentally-protected area. Oy.
France rejected a demand of a north African branch of al-Qaeda for the government to negotiate with Osama bin Laden over the release of five French hostages kidnapped in Niger.
Critics of the Obama Administration's plans to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia have echoes of other criticisms related to the stimulus and health care bills passed by the same administration - late notifications, deliberately timed to provide Congress with as little time as possible to object or amend. There's also the criticism that helping Saudi arabia hurts Israel, but the bigger theme seems to be that the Obama Administration has decided it's Bag of Dirty Tricks is mostly concerned with timing things so that the things that would normally be highly scrutinized slide through. As a response to the Party of No idea, it's actually pretty good...but that doesn't make either the sneak attack or the Party of No's behavior acceptable.
A warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was issued by a Swedish court, with the intent being interrogation on charges of rape and sexual assault filed against him. Mr. Assange maintains his innocence, and has characterized the charges against him as trumped-up after his organization released several hundred thousand documents detailing some of the work of the United States military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaking thereof, heavy battle tanks are being deployed to the front lines of Afghanistan for the first time in the nine-year war. And in keeping track of the money, the person in charge of making sure Afghanistan aid is not wasted on corruption is under Congressional fire for alleged incompetence.
And last out, even as tensions rise between the two governments, and speculation continues about an Internet worm that may have been designed to set Iran's nuclear ambitions back significantly, we find a story of the United States Navy rescuing and then coordinating with the Iranian Coast Guard to return sailors afloat in an emergency raft.
In the United States, the first civilian system trial of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner ended in conviction on one count of conspiracy and acquittal on all the other attempted counts. It's 20-to-life on the one count, but more than 280 other ones were cleared. This is apparently "stunning", according to the article writer, but for those people that have maintained that Guantanamo Bay residents are there and shouldn't be, it's vindication. And the reason many of those charges were thrown out? Torture. No wonder there was and continues to be a big push for military tribunals. Furthermore, the fact that the one count convicted on carried 20-without-parole to life-without-parole doesn't stop spinning to try and make the conviction appear like a crushing defeat and to declare that this conviction is proof that terrorist suspects can't be tried in civilian courts for precisely the reasons outlined above - the judge prevented torture-obtained information from being presented, whcih military tribunals don't have to worry about, and the jury actually had to agree to convict, which military tribunals don't have to worry about, either. Despite all of this, the key fact remains - the accused terrorist was convicted on a conspiracy count that has a minimum of 20 years of a prison sentence, without the presence of evidence obtained through the application of torture. The system worked. What I'm hearing from those columns is "If we had to put them all through the court system with those rules involved that presume innocence instead of guilt, some of them would walk free, and give proof to the idea that we held people who weren't terrorists! And that we tortured them until they confessed to make us stop! That's unacceptable, because We're Never Wrong, and we didn't break the law! Quickly, put them in tribunals where nobody has to hear them, and we can make up whatever rules we want to make sure they get convicted and held as terrorists."
Republicans in the House of Representatives blocked a bill that would allow for the extension of unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed in the country. The continuing brazen hypocrisy of the opposition party, insisting that the wealthiest receive tax cuts they do not need, while denying a much small expenditure for unemployment insurance, seems to not result in much for action - Well-worded letters informing the out-of-touch about what life is like back in their districts is a possible idea, and if they had attached to them exhaustive lists of the ways that the opposition party continues to wage class warfare against the people that nominally elect them, then perhaps it could shame some into defecting from their position, or strengthen the spine of those who actually do want to do right to get it together and pass things. That's the easy way. There are harder ways, and many of them will involve desperate constituents doing desperate things, whether it's going to work in a sweatshop run out of a garage, or other things for which the police will be called in and the people arrested for trying to reclaim some measure of a standard of living.
In a curious use of resources, a counter-terrorism exercise portrayed local marijuana growers as terrorists taking over a landmark and threatening to detonate an explosive if one of their number were not released. If, perhaps, marijuana growth were controlled by drug cartels with paramilitary organization, this would make sense. As far as we know, however, this is not the case, and pot growers are not known for resorting to violence. It's sort of like all the big security theater from the TSA - actual improvements have been slim to none. The kind of thing that demands soldiers turn over their nail clippers because they could be used as weapons, yet lets soldiers carry their unloaded weapons onto the plane, or that demands a breast cancer survivor remove her prosthetic to be examined. It's so bad that even Ann Coulter will spend a column making fun of the security theater (even as she advocates for profiling all the foreign-looking men).
The person in charge of the American Family Association claimed that the Medal of Honor had been "feminized" by being awarded to someone for saving the lives of their comrades, instead of being awarded to someone for killing people and breaking things in the name of security. Eh-hem. The official description of the reason for awarding the Medal of Honor is as follows: "distinguishes himself or herself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in action against an enemy of the United States". It says nothing at all about the requirement to kill other people. In fact, going and getting a massive killcount is likely to not get you the medal, because getting into a situation where you have to kill everyone to get out is not brilliant or gallant. It's usually pretty stupid.
Politically, the new Republican and Democratic leadership positions are secured - Nancy Pelosi is House Minority Leader, John Boehner is House Majority Leader, and the battlefield is situated for January.
the former half-governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, claimed that in the 2012 Presidential election, she could beat Barack Obama in a head-to-head contest.
Ms. Hollingsworth suggests that the re-shifting of the House of Representatives will flow from high income-tax, union-requirement states to low or no income-tax, union-optional states, and that these issues are the chief reason the population has shifted. Uh...I think there's something a bit more to it than that. Tax structure might help, sure, but I think most people are migrating because in those states mentioned, there appears to be an actual economy that is making jobs, instead of a stagnant place that is shedding them. Perhaps the tax structure and union popularity is making the gaining states more palatable to corporations, who put their operations there because they don't want to pay taxes and deal with collective bargaining, but if you want to point fingers for blame, it's the corporations moving and shifting their jobs, not the tax structure put in place by the politicians. Makes me wonder what it would be like if there were a uniform tax amount across the entire country - maybe there wouldn't be so much jockeying for finding the right pro-business state to be in.
A formal censure was the punishment for Representative Charles Rangel, convicted on several counts of breaching House of Representatives ethics rules.
Finally, San Francisco may have a ballot measure on next year's material to decide whether to criminalize circumcision of infant males.
Welcome to technologies, where more people are getting into the idea of adding augmented reality to picture books and childrens' stories, and we've successfully managed to trap anti-hydrogen and can now study captured antimatter.
Senator Wyden uses his Senatorial powers to place holds on bills to lock down COICA, a bill that would require ISPs to censor websites that media cabals claimed were violating copyright.
Finally, A bill in the Senate has potentially spooky overtones regarding globalization and control of the food supply. I don't know how much of this is globalization paranoia and how much of it is actual potential problems. There's also the question as to whether it would even be taken up by the House.
Finally, this tower design makes me think we'll get to see how a space elevator might end up working by building it in miniature in Taiwan.
In opinions, The WSJ opens by saying that all the new Republican governors and attorneys general should get involved in the state lawsuit challenging the authority of the health care law, so that the united fromt of pressure from the states will make the Administration crack (or will give the Republicans more support for their repeal thing).
Mr. Hanson wants the Obama administration to divorce themselves from the Bush administraion and let their own policies stand or fail on their merits, instead of continuing to point the finger at Mr. Bush for getting the people into this mess. He may have a point - but he misses the point, because he thinks the people rejected the "blame Bush" strategy, instead of noting the narrative that expected a Democratic president to fix the problems of quite a few years before them in merely two years.
TARP as robbery by banks rather than bailing banks out from their problems, from "Washington's Blog". the idea of which may have influenced Ms. de Ragy's column claiming the simulus was ineffective, because it worked on borrowed money, dragged growth away from the Private Sector and gave it to the government and delayed the Day of Reckoning for overspent state economies, taking demand and reshuffling it, instead of growing it. Putting the bailout of the banks, the stimulus, and the GM bailout together, calling the last of the list a failure, instead of a success by totaling the amount of government assistance given to GM, not just in the bailout, Mr. Gattuso says the government's continued intervention in the economy is a major reason why there hasn't been a bigger recovery - it creates "uncertainty" that prevents investors from growing the company and putting their money in. I wonder what the quarterly profit/loss statements for corporations say about that idea - if there really were uncertainties, I would expect share prices and profits to be low, based on little demand for the stock and not selling a whole lot of product for worry of another government action. Instead, I see workers being laid off left and right and executive bonuses and profits increasing. I don't think it's a matter of "uncertainty" or that the company feels like they can't afford to hire more people. It's the corporation being true to its nature - profit above people.
Hertiage wants us to immediately invest in infrastructure - so we can defend ourselves against a well-placed EMP burst by terrorists.
A suggestion that's worth something - if we want to cut defense spending in significant ways, maybe we should stop sending them off to wars in foreign countries.
As time goes on, but there are an awful lot of admonitions to the GOP to not get ahead of themselves and start thinking they've got the 2012 elections sewn up. Compared, though, to what the candidates and newly-elected are saying, I don't know if the advice is being heeded. Mr. Wolf seems to think that any candidate that offered a consistent jingoist, American-exceptionalist message would capture enough votes to win, and wouldn't necessarily have to be a policy wonk to do it, either. Y'know, someone they could have a beer with. We all saw how that worked out, didn't we? Ms. Noonan offers her take on it, figuring that most candidates in 2012 are going to be deciding next week whether they're going to run for the nomination of their party. In 2010. With almost two years to go before the next election. If that's not a recipe for burnout, there isn't much else.
Mr. Pipes praises the Oklahoma anti-international law amendment, claiming that Oklahoma is just explicitly saying what is already true - American laws for Americans only, and that Sharia law is Dangerous and Bloodthirsty and should be banned. He cites the presence of nonbinding Sharia courts in other countries as his proof of the creeping influence. We note that such an agreement could make a case that Oklahoma does not have to abide by any treaty in which the United States is a signatory to, because it was written in part by other nations (it's an awful claim and wouldn't stand up anywhere, though), and that the establishment of a religious law or separate courts for religious law in addition to civil and criminal courts would necessarily exclude those parts of the religious law that were incompatible with already-estabilshed law. Plus, there's a First Amendment claim waiting to happen there, unless the full suite of ecclesiastical courts could be established all at the same time.
Last out, Mr. Hatton provides a fawning review for a conservative political cartoon, claiming that the caricatures of the liberals in the family all have their ring of truth, that the cartoon itself achieves humor, and casting the only conservative-viewpoint in the family as the child, precocious and infintely more wise than the adults around her. The cartoon itself, Diversity Lane, is available for you to make your own reading on whether any of those claims are true. Persoanlly, I find that it delivers the intended message with the subtelty of an anvil, and the attempts at humor are clearly designed by the ACME Corporation. Not to mention that I find casting the main character, Diversity, as an eight year-old ruins the work's credibility. Not that satire with children can't be done - Bloom County comes to mind immediately, as do certain parts of Calvin and Hobbes, but part of the funny in those strips (series, if you add on Outland and Opus) was that these kids grasped insight into politics and philosophy far beyond their years, and only after some scaffolding involved (wagon rides with painful visual metaphors, for example). Single-panel cartoons don't get the scaffolding - just a punchline, fully-formed, with implication of the past, but nothing more. Finally, while it's a time-honored storytelling gambit to use a child to shout that the emperor has no clothes (it's probably close to Older Than Dirt than we think), this child seems to instead be a mouthpiece for whatever mean-spiritedness the cartoonist has in mind. The review article seems to think it a feature (liberal thinking is so facile that an eight year-old could dismantle it easily) rather than a bug (dropping an anvil is only funny in certain situations). That might be appealing to his intended audience, for all I know - the cartoonist gets praise from such iconic figures as L. Brent Bozell III, and appears on flagship publications like WorldNet Daily and The American Thinker. Still, go check it out for yourselves - We Are Not Unbiased, after all.
Last for tonight, a hopeful letter wishing a fan well.
Have a look, as well, at A letter from one Bob Dylan to the Immigration and Nautraliztion Service to allow John Lennon and Yoko Ono to continue living in the United States, after the Nixon administration started deportation proceedings against them. To see how one should probably work immigration properly, look in on how Canada, and say, the province of Manitoba, treats immigration - seeking those with skills, offering them work and a path to citizenship, and preferring those people who have relatives in the area - and what do they get? Lots of well-adjusted immigrants and plenty more people who want to immigrate.
If you ever wanted to know how early bullying starts, and how minute the things can be, observe the following: a first-grade girl taking flak from boys in her classes for bringing a Star Wars water bottle to school. Now, anyone who thinks Star Wars is only for boys is deluding themselves, as there are a lot of women who both work on Star Wars and who love it. It's more like how the story of the rabbit with red wings ends up being a horrible Aesop about how conformity leads to happiness, instead of a story about how being who you are, including being different, leads to happiness. It's a case of Ponies.
Point being, if someone gives you or your kid guff about anything at all, the right response to those people is whatever equivalent of a pimp-slap and "English, motherf--ker! Do you speak it?!" you can think of. And some of those responses are damn clever - like an assortment of clowns to successfully mock the KKK, or a 91 year-old grandmother decked out to the nines in superhero gear, for example. (Speaking of, the Seattle area apparently has a lot of Super Heroes, not all of whom are known to the police) And with more and more people coming out at earlier ages, your prep time for the awesome may be shortened a bit more than you thought you had. So start thinking about your comebacks now. Especially if you need props. If it's teenagers, figuring out the core of the drama, and working through to find a way that everyone decides to drop the drama, is the way you might find a way to stop the bullying. (With teens, being egocentric and all, everything revolves around them and how they feel wronged, not necessarily how they're possibly being the one causing the drama.)
However, there are times when there are failures, such as when 79 countries say being gay shouldn't protect you from being killed without trial by your government, with 10 countries abstaining and 26 more not showing up for the vote. It's another tick mark in the long series of incidents where being QUILTBAG is reason for teasing, violence, harm, or the denial of legal rights. We wouldn't need things like Transgender Rememberance Day and other projects if we weren't obsessed with making sure that The Other is always at arm's length and properly In Their Place.
Although, in perhaps what might be the beginnings of a loosening, the current Bishop of Rome has said that the use of condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission from, say, male prostitutes, might be acceptable. Not much said about, y'know, couples in a committed relationship or anyone else, for that example.
Finally, a clear case of "Nobody has read the book" - Brave New World is removed from a high school curriciulum after a complaint that it portrays First Nations people insensitively. Because it throws about the word "savage" routinely, and because the place where the non test-tube babies are born is called the Reservation. Perhaps if they had read the book, they might notice the context and tone of the book, which is against the society that calls natural-born people savages. *sigh* Would someone please grow a spine, or at least have a process in place where the people who do know what they're talking about have a chance to point out that the people who don't are, in fact, clueless?
Out in the world today, ire and outrage at the covering of a protected environmental site in Malta with sand so as to film for an HBO series. When pressed as to how they allowed such a thing to happen, the observing authority claimed it wasn't feasible to have an observer on all the filming sites to make sure the environmental areas were protected. Which kind of defeats the point of declaring it an environmentally-protected area. Oy.
France rejected a demand of a north African branch of al-Qaeda for the government to negotiate with Osama bin Laden over the release of five French hostages kidnapped in Niger.
Critics of the Obama Administration's plans to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia have echoes of other criticisms related to the stimulus and health care bills passed by the same administration - late notifications, deliberately timed to provide Congress with as little time as possible to object or amend. There's also the criticism that helping Saudi arabia hurts Israel, but the bigger theme seems to be that the Obama Administration has decided it's Bag of Dirty Tricks is mostly concerned with timing things so that the things that would normally be highly scrutinized slide through. As a response to the Party of No idea, it's actually pretty good...but that doesn't make either the sneak attack or the Party of No's behavior acceptable.
A warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was issued by a Swedish court, with the intent being interrogation on charges of rape and sexual assault filed against him. Mr. Assange maintains his innocence, and has characterized the charges against him as trumped-up after his organization released several hundred thousand documents detailing some of the work of the United States military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaking thereof, heavy battle tanks are being deployed to the front lines of Afghanistan for the first time in the nine-year war. And in keeping track of the money, the person in charge of making sure Afghanistan aid is not wasted on corruption is under Congressional fire for alleged incompetence.
And last out, even as tensions rise between the two governments, and speculation continues about an Internet worm that may have been designed to set Iran's nuclear ambitions back significantly, we find a story of the United States Navy rescuing and then coordinating with the Iranian Coast Guard to return sailors afloat in an emergency raft.
In the United States, the first civilian system trial of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner ended in conviction on one count of conspiracy and acquittal on all the other attempted counts. It's 20-to-life on the one count, but more than 280 other ones were cleared. This is apparently "stunning", according to the article writer, but for those people that have maintained that Guantanamo Bay residents are there and shouldn't be, it's vindication. And the reason many of those charges were thrown out? Torture. No wonder there was and continues to be a big push for military tribunals. Furthermore, the fact that the one count convicted on carried 20-without-parole to life-without-parole doesn't stop spinning to try and make the conviction appear like a crushing defeat and to declare that this conviction is proof that terrorist suspects can't be tried in civilian courts for precisely the reasons outlined above - the judge prevented torture-obtained information from being presented, whcih military tribunals don't have to worry about, and the jury actually had to agree to convict, which military tribunals don't have to worry about, either. Despite all of this, the key fact remains - the accused terrorist was convicted on a conspiracy count that has a minimum of 20 years of a prison sentence, without the presence of evidence obtained through the application of torture. The system worked. What I'm hearing from those columns is "If we had to put them all through the court system with those rules involved that presume innocence instead of guilt, some of them would walk free, and give proof to the idea that we held people who weren't terrorists! And that we tortured them until they confessed to make us stop! That's unacceptable, because We're Never Wrong, and we didn't break the law! Quickly, put them in tribunals where nobody has to hear them, and we can make up whatever rules we want to make sure they get convicted and held as terrorists."
Republicans in the House of Representatives blocked a bill that would allow for the extension of unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed in the country. The continuing brazen hypocrisy of the opposition party, insisting that the wealthiest receive tax cuts they do not need, while denying a much small expenditure for unemployment insurance, seems to not result in much for action - Well-worded letters informing the out-of-touch about what life is like back in their districts is a possible idea, and if they had attached to them exhaustive lists of the ways that the opposition party continues to wage class warfare against the people that nominally elect them, then perhaps it could shame some into defecting from their position, or strengthen the spine of those who actually do want to do right to get it together and pass things. That's the easy way. There are harder ways, and many of them will involve desperate constituents doing desperate things, whether it's going to work in a sweatshop run out of a garage, or other things for which the police will be called in and the people arrested for trying to reclaim some measure of a standard of living.
In a curious use of resources, a counter-terrorism exercise portrayed local marijuana growers as terrorists taking over a landmark and threatening to detonate an explosive if one of their number were not released. If, perhaps, marijuana growth were controlled by drug cartels with paramilitary organization, this would make sense. As far as we know, however, this is not the case, and pot growers are not known for resorting to violence. It's sort of like all the big security theater from the TSA - actual improvements have been slim to none. The kind of thing that demands soldiers turn over their nail clippers because they could be used as weapons, yet lets soldiers carry their unloaded weapons onto the plane, or that demands a breast cancer survivor remove her prosthetic to be examined. It's so bad that even Ann Coulter will spend a column making fun of the security theater (even as she advocates for profiling all the foreign-looking men).
The person in charge of the American Family Association claimed that the Medal of Honor had been "feminized" by being awarded to someone for saving the lives of their comrades, instead of being awarded to someone for killing people and breaking things in the name of security. Eh-hem. The official description of the reason for awarding the Medal of Honor is as follows: "distinguishes himself or herself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in action against an enemy of the United States". It says nothing at all about the requirement to kill other people. In fact, going and getting a massive killcount is likely to not get you the medal, because getting into a situation where you have to kill everyone to get out is not brilliant or gallant. It's usually pretty stupid.
Politically, the new Republican and Democratic leadership positions are secured - Nancy Pelosi is House Minority Leader, John Boehner is House Majority Leader, and the battlefield is situated for January.
the former half-governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, claimed that in the 2012 Presidential election, she could beat Barack Obama in a head-to-head contest.
Ms. Hollingsworth suggests that the re-shifting of the House of Representatives will flow from high income-tax, union-requirement states to low or no income-tax, union-optional states, and that these issues are the chief reason the population has shifted. Uh...I think there's something a bit more to it than that. Tax structure might help, sure, but I think most people are migrating because in those states mentioned, there appears to be an actual economy that is making jobs, instead of a stagnant place that is shedding them. Perhaps the tax structure and union popularity is making the gaining states more palatable to corporations, who put their operations there because they don't want to pay taxes and deal with collective bargaining, but if you want to point fingers for blame, it's the corporations moving and shifting their jobs, not the tax structure put in place by the politicians. Makes me wonder what it would be like if there were a uniform tax amount across the entire country - maybe there wouldn't be so much jockeying for finding the right pro-business state to be in.
A formal censure was the punishment for Representative Charles Rangel, convicted on several counts of breaching House of Representatives ethics rules.
Finally, San Francisco may have a ballot measure on next year's material to decide whether to criminalize circumcision of infant males.
Welcome to technologies, where more people are getting into the idea of adding augmented reality to picture books and childrens' stories, and we've successfully managed to trap anti-hydrogen and can now study captured antimatter.
Senator Wyden uses his Senatorial powers to place holds on bills to lock down COICA, a bill that would require ISPs to censor websites that media cabals claimed were violating copyright.
Finally, A bill in the Senate has potentially spooky overtones regarding globalization and control of the food supply. I don't know how much of this is globalization paranoia and how much of it is actual potential problems. There's also the question as to whether it would even be taken up by the House.
Finally, this tower design makes me think we'll get to see how a space elevator might end up working by building it in miniature in Taiwan.
In opinions, The WSJ opens by saying that all the new Republican governors and attorneys general should get involved in the state lawsuit challenging the authority of the health care law, so that the united fromt of pressure from the states will make the Administration crack (or will give the Republicans more support for their repeal thing).
Mr. Hanson wants the Obama administration to divorce themselves from the Bush administraion and let their own policies stand or fail on their merits, instead of continuing to point the finger at Mr. Bush for getting the people into this mess. He may have a point - but he misses the point, because he thinks the people rejected the "blame Bush" strategy, instead of noting the narrative that expected a Democratic president to fix the problems of quite a few years before them in merely two years.
TARP as robbery by banks rather than bailing banks out from their problems, from "Washington's Blog". the idea of which may have influenced Ms. de Ragy's column claiming the simulus was ineffective, because it worked on borrowed money, dragged growth away from the Private Sector and gave it to the government and delayed the Day of Reckoning for overspent state economies, taking demand and reshuffling it, instead of growing it. Putting the bailout of the banks, the stimulus, and the GM bailout together, calling the last of the list a failure, instead of a success by totaling the amount of government assistance given to GM, not just in the bailout, Mr. Gattuso says the government's continued intervention in the economy is a major reason why there hasn't been a bigger recovery - it creates "uncertainty" that prevents investors from growing the company and putting their money in. I wonder what the quarterly profit/loss statements for corporations say about that idea - if there really were uncertainties, I would expect share prices and profits to be low, based on little demand for the stock and not selling a whole lot of product for worry of another government action. Instead, I see workers being laid off left and right and executive bonuses and profits increasing. I don't think it's a matter of "uncertainty" or that the company feels like they can't afford to hire more people. It's the corporation being true to its nature - profit above people.
Hertiage wants us to immediately invest in infrastructure - so we can defend ourselves against a well-placed EMP burst by terrorists.
A suggestion that's worth something - if we want to cut defense spending in significant ways, maybe we should stop sending them off to wars in foreign countries.
As time goes on, but there are an awful lot of admonitions to the GOP to not get ahead of themselves and start thinking they've got the 2012 elections sewn up. Compared, though, to what the candidates and newly-elected are saying, I don't know if the advice is being heeded. Mr. Wolf seems to think that any candidate that offered a consistent jingoist, American-exceptionalist message would capture enough votes to win, and wouldn't necessarily have to be a policy wonk to do it, either. Y'know, someone they could have a beer with. We all saw how that worked out, didn't we? Ms. Noonan offers her take on it, figuring that most candidates in 2012 are going to be deciding next week whether they're going to run for the nomination of their party. In 2010. With almost two years to go before the next election. If that's not a recipe for burnout, there isn't much else.
Mr. Pipes praises the Oklahoma anti-international law amendment, claiming that Oklahoma is just explicitly saying what is already true - American laws for Americans only, and that Sharia law is Dangerous and Bloodthirsty and should be banned. He cites the presence of nonbinding Sharia courts in other countries as his proof of the creeping influence. We note that such an agreement could make a case that Oklahoma does not have to abide by any treaty in which the United States is a signatory to, because it was written in part by other nations (it's an awful claim and wouldn't stand up anywhere, though), and that the establishment of a religious law or separate courts for religious law in addition to civil and criminal courts would necessarily exclude those parts of the religious law that were incompatible with already-estabilshed law. Plus, there's a First Amendment claim waiting to happen there, unless the full suite of ecclesiastical courts could be established all at the same time.
Last out, Mr. Hatton provides a fawning review for a conservative political cartoon, claiming that the caricatures of the liberals in the family all have their ring of truth, that the cartoon itself achieves humor, and casting the only conservative-viewpoint in the family as the child, precocious and infintely more wise than the adults around her. The cartoon itself, Diversity Lane, is available for you to make your own reading on whether any of those claims are true. Persoanlly, I find that it delivers the intended message with the subtelty of an anvil, and the attempts at humor are clearly designed by the ACME Corporation. Not to mention that I find casting the main character, Diversity, as an eight year-old ruins the work's credibility. Not that satire with children can't be done - Bloom County comes to mind immediately, as do certain parts of Calvin and Hobbes, but part of the funny in those strips (series, if you add on Outland and Opus) was that these kids grasped insight into politics and philosophy far beyond their years, and only after some scaffolding involved (wagon rides with painful visual metaphors, for example). Single-panel cartoons don't get the scaffolding - just a punchline, fully-formed, with implication of the past, but nothing more. Finally, while it's a time-honored storytelling gambit to use a child to shout that the emperor has no clothes (it's probably close to Older Than Dirt than we think), this child seems to instead be a mouthpiece for whatever mean-spiritedness the cartoonist has in mind. The review article seems to think it a feature (liberal thinking is so facile that an eight year-old could dismantle it easily) rather than a bug (dropping an anvil is only funny in certain situations). That might be appealing to his intended audience, for all I know - the cartoonist gets praise from such iconic figures as L. Brent Bozell III, and appears on flagship publications like WorldNet Daily and The American Thinker. Still, go check it out for yourselves - We Are Not Unbiased, after all.
Last for tonight, a hopeful letter wishing a fan well.
