Lots of data - 8-10 January 2011

Good day, readers of the news. There's a lot. And not all of it is good. So we'll start with cute pictures of a lion and a tiger cub, and their occasional moonlighting as shepherd animals. And move from there into an optical illusion that takes advantage of the fact that it's harder to tell when something is changing when it's also in motion.

Dick Winters was recalled to the Dead Pool Army Regiment, at 92 years of age. He's most famous for having some of his achievements recounted in the book "Band of Brothers".

We also saw the life and passing of David / Sonia Burgess, a lawyer with a passion for human rights, and significant success in both refugee asylum and transgender recognition fields.

Out in the world today, A Catholic school banned a gay-straight alliance, and could have used a better set of comparisons to other organizations that would not be permitted there. I wonder how the kids at that school who are gay feel about this? Marginalized? Despairing? Something else?

Mutada al-Sadr returns to Iraq, and returns to his pervious rhetorical position against the presence of the United States in Iraq.

Ratchet your Iran fear up a notch - it's claimed that Iran can produce its own nuclear fuel rods.

A cleric arrest in Afghanistan sparked protests from local inhabitants and from local forces, who claim they were not involved or consulted in the matter.

And completing the Quartet, Time speculates how far extremists have gotten into the government and security forces of Pakistan.

It's not all bad, though - Egyptian Muslims joined Coptic Christians in celebration of a service, with the Muslims serving as shields against further violence to the Christians. That's the kind of interfaith relationships that we need in that area. I hope this is not a one-off.

Finally, A referendum in the nation of Sudan succeeded at the ballot box, creating a new nation of Southern Sudan out of the original country.

Domestically, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission sued a corporation for firing someone based on their obesity, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The person fired has since died, but according to the claim filed by EEOC, she was able to perform all the required functions of her work and was thus terminated solely based on a perception of how her weight would affect her work.

A doctor group has sued the United States Department of Agriculture for not recommending vegetarianism instead of the new food pyramid to keep people healthy.

A recruiter for a church in Florida turned himself in on charges of kidnapping, after it was alleged he kidnapped a boy from a Wal-Mart, drove him somewhere else, then performed a sex act on himself in front of the boy.

The United States government is subpoenaing information from social media platforms like Twitter to build their case against Wikileaks.

The United States Army is looking into changing their policy that prevents women from taking part in active combat roles.

House Republicans have pushed for a bill that would close the offices of any task force or commission or other Executive agency whose head was not confirmed by the Senate.

Protesting the Department of Homeland (in)Security's programs that encourage citizens to spy on each other and report it to DHS, several packages sent through the post ignited into flames at their destinations.

Finally, ProPublica would like to know which Senator killed the whistleblower protections bill by placing an anonymous hold on it.

In technology, a Unitarian Universalist congregation raised sufficient funds to install a wind turbine on their congregation grounds.

There's also the concept of Jelloware, edible and biodegradable drink containers.

Also, a poratble book scanner, for up to 200 pages worth of material. In case you want to take your collections, make them difital, and possibly clean out some space or donate/sell your long runs of various works.

Last out, The Commerce Department may be at the head of an effort to create a secure Internet ID for all Americans. Shades and overtones of Orwell may be invoked at your leisure, even as the administration denies that there's anything centralized or even ID-ish about it, just that private sector companies need to move forward in making it possible for people to get a secure trusted identity on the Internet.

Welcome to opinions, where the virtue of thrift and living on nothing espoused by older generations is being waved in this generation's face as a Take That.

Arturo García is happy for Ted Williams, the homeless-blessed-with-a-radio-voice, but worries that in our celebration of raising one man up, we're ignoring the millions of others in a similar predicament, who might not have the benefit of a viral video to help them.

Zaheer Ali says that Katie Couric missed it by that much in suggesting that a Muslim version of The Cosby Show is the right idea to get people to stop believing all the bad stereotypes about Muslims. Right background, right problem, wrong solution. Mostly because television doesn't portray reality, and especially not minorities.

Mr. Mauro takes advantage of Wikileaks' information to say "Look! All that stuff about the Danish cartoons was manufactured by terrorists to score points! It wasn't genuine outrage!". Hooray, it wasn't genuine outrage. People still got attacked. There are still plenty of examples where outrage against something is both genuine and pigheaded. We like the call for Muslims to respect the societies they are in as a better point, because it provides a way out on both sides from extremism and violence, but we would hope that it's not just Muslims who take to heart the knowledge that society has to be able to integrate and work with everyone, despite what certain commentators are saying about non-white groups.

And finally, Ms. Wright says that the United States shouldn't ratify treaties that subject it to the U.N. on issues like women's rights and speech regarding religion, because the U.S., stalwart defender of the One True Faith that allows for Freedom of Speech and Religion, Christianity, can be outvoted by countries that pracitce the Bloodthirsty, anti-women, anti-Christianity religion of Islam. If the U.N. were a body with enforcement powers, there might be something to it. That said, the United States can still point to a record that says "We don't stone people", even as they are rightly subjected to review about the parts of their policy that do fail to protect women and religious freedoms, should they sign on.

An excellent question from The Merch Girl - when you're both Not From Around These Parts and trying to express yourself as queer, how do you manage to get people, especially women, to get past the Exotic Beauty bit to the part where you discover a shared attraction?

The Heritage Foundation's Mr. Carrol accuses the Obama administration of crony capitalism, as if it were something new and heretofore unkown, instead of the standard business practice of the government for the last 20+ years.

Mr. Donnelly lays out his case as to why the defense budget should never be cut and the military should always get whatever it wants without question - because the FREE WORLD! is at stake when Team America: World Police cuts back on its military spending, produces fewer fighter planes, fields fewer large ships, and reduces the forces. Why, coupled with the apparent destruction of the Warrior Culture in the military, a nebulous and undefiend agent that is somehow the antithesis of "politically correct culture", Team America is on the verge of being filled with sissies, liberals, and other people who don't want to Kill The Terrorists and Save The World.

The WSJ claims that Obamacare should still be repealed, because it's going to be more expensive than the budget tricks say, and that people pointing out the way the Republicans are breaking their promises and not holding to their rules are being petty. Well, if you're going to set yourselves up as the people who are in favor of transparency, measured thought and forewarning, and budget cutting, then don't go making obious and visible departures from that message in your first two days in office.

Mr. Krauthammer thinks this idea of governing within the Constitution, as the original framers intended, will catch on and become a very popular movement. Assuming the Republicans actually govern that way, that is. And hopefully with the standard caveat that "no, slavery is bad, and women should be able to vote, and discrimination sucks." among other things. Because if Mr. Krauthammer wants to walk back all of those three things, then his "Constitutionalism" condemns itself to the fringe of the right-wing, instead of being the alternative to his perception of liberals just deciding they can do something, Constitution-be-damned.

Finally out of opinions, Ms. Fabrizio laments the lack of Truth in American society, whether moral truth (godlessness), political truth (the "unprecedented" ways in which the Administration and the Congress grab power), scientific truth (because we teach climate change as a reality, instead of an unsupported hypothesis), and American truth (because we're not all gung-ho jingoists who believe they are extra-super-special-snowflakes and revere the Constitution in the way the Tea Party claims to).

And last out for tonight, Torchwood is apparently returning for a fourth season, despite having killed most of the cast at the end of the third, with a possible storyline where everyone on Earth has the same condition of Captain Jack Harkness. Other welcome television news includes the non-renewal of Sarah Palin's reality television series for a second season.

Plus one flowchart - a humorous attemtp at helping you find real food at your megamart.

And one interesting bit - a digression into the way that various countries have handled naming children, from the English being fairly free-flowing, while other European countries require it to be taken from the list of official names...

Special News Item - The shooting of Congressperson Giffords.

A gunman shot several people outside a Tuscon Safeway store, including Congresswoman Gabirelle Giffords, on Saturday. The Congresswoman was holding a public event at the store. The Congresswoman may yet recover from having been shot clean through the head. Unfortunately, one of the victims, a nine year old girl born on a different tragedy date, will not.

The shooter's own words reveal a belief that the government was using mind control on the population through grammar, but the writer of related materials scoffed at the idea that his writings might have inspired the violence. There's the possibility of a group association which might have contributed, for which the people in charge say, "ridiculous". The mental illness angle is heavily speculated, but not necessarily confirmable one way or another. It may also be used as a catch-all and a way of sweeping things under the rug without fully investigating the real root causes, keeping in mind that there are also social systems in place meant to push the mentally ill into the "dangerous and violent Other" category so we don't have to think about how to fix that, either. Finally, one can draw serious parallels between how this happened and how all the "isolated incidents" against abortion providers and clinics happens and worry that the track being followed is the same. Because there's evidence that suggests it is. In any case, the evidence suggests the attack was planned out and that the shooter was exhibiting behaviors that isolated him from society, but also that made it sound like he was putting his affairs in order before doing what he did.

The Secretary of State condemned the attack and called on people to drop the extremist rhetoric and ideas. Her plea for sanity, however, will go unheard, as the rhetoric never intends to change. Sarah Palin has relaunched her website with crosshairs on a map indicating where she feels are good targets for political change. In doing so, she has also claimed her opponents are trying to make political points off of a tragedy by pointing out the presence of her crosshairs map. And there was the incident when, even when confronted with the effect of inflamed rhetoric, John Boehner never apologized, but blew off the Senator that was experiencing real consequences. Plus, the leader of the Tuscon Tea Party has said that they're not changing their rhetoric any, either, even as they condemn the person who stepped across the rhetoric line into violence. So, to go against that, we have to speak up and speak out against the use of that rhetoric.

Then, there's the finger-pointing. Whether it's compaining that remarks made about how Arizona has become a haven for bigotry and hatred, trying to claim that the shooter was actually a lunatic leftist, instead of suckling the teat of rightwing eliminationist rhetoric, the right wing doing their very best to distance themselves from any responsibility on the matter at all, often by blaming the left, and claiming leftists jumped to a conclusion about the root inspiration for the attack, claiming that left-wing commentators are playing up the extreme right-wing angle to further their own political agenda, repeatedly and with the consistency of a set of talking points, attempting a small bit of martyrdom and complaining about "media bias" while accusing their opposition of making profit off of a tragedy, blaming the media in general of wanting to demonize right-wingers, or flat-out denying that there's any connection at all between rhetoric and action there's plenty of people trying desperately not to be stuck holding the bag, some of them having to do so after they dug themselves into a giant hole with inflammatory rhetoric.

What is interesting to note, from perspective, is that people who are up in arms about the imagery of modern rap music and how it contributes to a bad culture seem to be remarkably silent about how the imagery of modern political commentary contributes to a bad culture.

And worse, this incident hasn't stopped the tide. A different nutter, also possibly fueled by rhetoric, made threats against a sitting Senator and his office.

So what might be possible solutions? Well, if you believe that the only way that Republicans can convince normal people to vote for them is to use rhetoric strong enough to put people in a hypnotic state of fear, which makes the crazies act on their crazy, then the only working solution would be for the Republicans to give up on the fear rhetoric and take the whomping they deserve. That's not happening. And those asking for a toning down of the rhetoric may be accused of trying to stifle free speech, the reasoning being that asking to turn down the noise because some people take it seriously is asking someone to self-censor, and self-censorship is bad for democracy.

Mr. Kurtz suggests that the solution is for the media to stop trying to blow this up into a giant tragedy fueled entirely by one political side or another, but that the ratings game and the advertising dollars will ensure that this doesn't happen, nor will a waiting period for all the facts to come out and allow for truth stories instead of blame.

The truth of the matter is, though, speech has consequences. It's something that we taught our children in the schoolyard at an early age, if not before. Words are not for hurting, we said. They found out that calling someone a "pootyhead" had consequences. Yet they grow up and see people on the TV machine making all sorts of statements, and then claiming they're not at fault if someone takes them at their word and does something, that the person who took action is solely responsible for all the bad things, and the climate those TV machine people were creating has nothing to do with this "isolated incident". But they are to blame. After all, if the people on the TV machine really believed all the things they were saying, there would not be a series of "isolated incidents" that happen every so often, there would be an active mob and resistance antagonizing, sabotaging, and possibly even killing people on a regular schedule. The fact that the farthest those people go is to beg for money and votes instead of being out on the lines shows they don't believe the crap they're spewing to the point of actually acting on it. (And why should they throw away all that wealth and power because of a cause, after all?)

This thing has happened. What are we going to do to prevent the next thing from happening? It's a good start to say keeping your head and not giving into the fear (fear is the mind-killer, in more ways than just a literary allusion) will help, as it will cut down on the rhetoric's effectiveness if a critical mass of people start saying "We refuse to be ruled by your fearmongering". But then there's also the practical aspects - knowing full well that someone else will decide to act on what they hear and see, how can you make it as difficult as possible for someone to actually be able to do such a thing without putting the representatives in Popemobiles when they go out and see the public?