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Too late as to be helpful - 31 March 2011
Apr. 3rd, 2011 01:18 pmGreetings. Take note, please, of how Honduras is still a hot spot after a military coup in 2009, and the ways that the people of the country are fighting the government and its private (often foreign) business partners, how women are gunning for votes in Nigerian elections, and what looks to be the last few days or hours of the current regime in Cote D'Ivoire.
The United States Secretary of Defense has been called before Congress to justify the cost of the spending in the Libyan conflict - about $550 million for the first week, mostly in missiles fired. Additionally, the legality of the conflict was questioned during the session. Neither of these things were taken seriously during the previous administrator's conflicts, yet now we're suddenly worried about the cost of war and whether it was a legal one. The political motivations on this could not be more obvious. (You may also be clued into that through the smug columnists reminding us of just how much this isn't any different than the previous administrator, just with the Rs and Ds reversed, and asking how well the liberals like being on the other shoe now. The liberals haven't changed, and neither have the centrists who were just as happy with the previous administrator's wars and justifications thereof. Please stop confusing the two groups, as they are nothing alike. The conservatives are still agitating for unilateral action in Libya, just to get it over and done with, and so that they can have another thing to tar the curretn administrator with in how much he is like his predecessor.
The further announcement of the United States sharply reducing its role in the air operations of the conflict leads into analysts claiming that the United States will have to do the heavy lifting on Libya, even if they don't want to, because the European parts of NATO have been systematically disarming themselves and relying on United States military spending to protect them, and you may add any sort of "the socialist wealking defeatists" after that sentence, as the tenor of the article is fairly clear about what it thinks of such decisions.
Take a look at some high-resolution pictures of the Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima, taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle flying over the complex, a complex that a recruiter would like to have nuke experts in the United States working to contain and make safe again.
Domestically, remember how we keep being told that the TARP bailout was a success because it turned a profit for the government (a position I have trumpeted as well)? Turns out while it is profitable, it was about a third of the return on investment a private investor buying stock would have received. The government should have made a lot more money on this deal than they have. Yet another reason to hate large conglomerates that were foolish with your money and made sure they were okay before telling you to go screw yourself when you wanted a similar kind of relief. Maybe we'd have a bit more money to work at restarting the economy with. Or maybe we wouldn't, if the Republican House continues to pass bills requiring taxpayer dollars be spent on voucher programs that distribute primarily to religious schools that aren't even up to standards. Or we have fairly expensive statuary going in when all that was asked for was some public art.
Instead, we get a filibuster in Missouri preventing the state from re-enrolling in the stimulus-bill program that provided extended weeks of jobless benefit payments to their unemployed, meaning that on Saturday, a lot of people will be cut off from their unemployment benefits. Because four Republicans believe that this money is money that the government doesn't have and that has to be stopped to curb out-of-control spending. Despite the fact that jobless benefits are the most simulative means of federal spending...and we don't hear those same Republicans calling for the immediate stopping of tax loopholes and giveaways to corporations and the people who have money, these Republicans have staked their claim here that fiscal austerity and good modeling starts by screwing the people who need the money the most to stave off a cascade of other problems that are associated with having no income stream. All because these Republicans refuse to believe reality and substitute their own.
We may not get to see the numbers behind situations like these in the future (unless mediated to us by corporations and media conglomerates), as several government entities dedicated to transparency and data sifting are having their budgets axed by the current budget proposal. Because it's a lot easier to lie, cheat, and steal when you know the average person won't be able to sift the data, much less make any sense out of it.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says quite openly that in his vision of the future, Social Security and Medicare do not exist, because they are incompatible with his vision of America, a vision he believes most of the people in the country share.
All said and done, however, there is something to feel potential hope for, as the first of what are hoped to be several recall petitions for state senators in Wisconsin was delivered with about half again as many valid signatures as was needed to initiate the proceedings.
In technology, Google would like to expand their Goggles program so that you can take a picture of a person and have their social media data appear from facial recognition. Because there's nothing quite like giving repressive goernments a tool to identify dissidents discreetly and easily. Google says that someone has to opt-in to the service for someone's picture of them to display their profile data, but the way things are going, it will only be a matter of time before someone is opted-in by default.
In opinions, Ms. Malkin believes that the known anti-gun tendencies of the nomination for Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms director should disqualify him from the position outright. She also makes s econdary case that the nomination should not be confirmed because his subordinates do not like him as a manager, and because he's been involved in teh botched Operation Gunrunner, but that only surfaces briefly in her quest to try and say that the person in charge of the regulation of firearms should not be someone with anti-gun tendencies, backing up her convictions with evidence from groups like the NRA. Well, sure, if all you cite are gun enthusiasts-to-gun nuts, tehn anyone who might interpret the Second Amendment less broadly will be deemed unacceptable. Surely, if she wanted to make a more convincing case, Ms. Malkin could find some sources that are not so heavily biased? Like that angle about how the rank-and-file have misgivings about him? That might actually be convincing.
And working the other side of the room with just as many logical faults, Ms. Coulter turns a solid point about the inconsistency of stated goals and objectives regarding Middle East unrest into a bizzare screed against how much liberals will be vehemently against doing anything in a foreign country that benefits the United States, and uses the Iraq War as her proof for that. One of these things is not like the other, Ms. Coulter. Liberals were hopping mad about Iraq because the justifications that had been sold to the American people turned out to be lies, and not only that, premeditated lies. Had it been sold honestly, it might have gone down in flames, but there would have at least been an actual debate on the merits. You're accusing the administration of hypcorisy, Ms. Coulter, and of not thinking through their engagements, which is a defensible position. Accusing them of deceiving the people about the true reasons for going, however, is not. They've been pretty forthright about why they have and haven't gone into various places, sometimes justifying both positions at once. (Some other commentators have noticed this and are building their case about these Janus positions.)
Last out of opinions, Mr. Moore claims the reason we're having such budget troubles is because we have more people employed by government than manufacturing in all but two states, and we can't get rid of them, and thus we have more people taking our money in taxes to pay their salaries than we do having people who make real goods that actually drive the economy and make it possible for the government employees to draw paychecks. According to the column, if we wanted to modernize and make them more efficient and productive, we could probably cut out all the "dead weight" Mr. Moore imagines exists in governemnt offices, except that the unions of government workers nix that idea as soon as its floated. Things like tenure for teachers make it so they become mediocre, and so our schools become mediocre and have poor results despite more money being spent on them. His solution is simple: All we have to do is make sure those government employees are as perpetually afraid fo their jobs as private sector workers, pay them a little less the insufficiently for their work, like private sector workers, sell off government services to the private sector to be run as profit-driven businesses, and we'll have all our budget problems solved! (Just in time for tax cuts to those people in charge of the corporations that make stuff, because they're important to the economy and we wouldn't survive if they didn't get their six and seven-figure salaries tax-free or as close to it as we can get them.) Because our eceonomy needs to have even less people drawing a steady paycheck to spend than we do now if it wants a hope of recovering.
Last for tonight, the Johnsoning method of campaign creation, using assertions, extensions, and limitations to world-build between the players and referee. Along with a veto in case something objectionable gets suggested that a player or referee can't stand or use.
The United States Secretary of Defense has been called before Congress to justify the cost of the spending in the Libyan conflict - about $550 million for the first week, mostly in missiles fired. Additionally, the legality of the conflict was questioned during the session. Neither of these things were taken seriously during the previous administrator's conflicts, yet now we're suddenly worried about the cost of war and whether it was a legal one. The political motivations on this could not be more obvious. (You may also be clued into that through the smug columnists reminding us of just how much this isn't any different than the previous administrator, just with the Rs and Ds reversed, and asking how well the liberals like being on the other shoe now. The liberals haven't changed, and neither have the centrists who were just as happy with the previous administrator's wars and justifications thereof. Please stop confusing the two groups, as they are nothing alike. The conservatives are still agitating for unilateral action in Libya, just to get it over and done with, and so that they can have another thing to tar the curretn administrator with in how much he is like his predecessor.
The further announcement of the United States sharply reducing its role in the air operations of the conflict leads into analysts claiming that the United States will have to do the heavy lifting on Libya, even if they don't want to, because the European parts of NATO have been systematically disarming themselves and relying on United States military spending to protect them, and you may add any sort of "the socialist wealking defeatists" after that sentence, as the tenor of the article is fairly clear about what it thinks of such decisions.
Take a look at some high-resolution pictures of the Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima, taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle flying over the complex, a complex that a recruiter would like to have nuke experts in the United States working to contain and make safe again.
Domestically, remember how we keep being told that the TARP bailout was a success because it turned a profit for the government (a position I have trumpeted as well)? Turns out while it is profitable, it was about a third of the return on investment a private investor buying stock would have received. The government should have made a lot more money on this deal than they have. Yet another reason to hate large conglomerates that were foolish with your money and made sure they were okay before telling you to go screw yourself when you wanted a similar kind of relief. Maybe we'd have a bit more money to work at restarting the economy with. Or maybe we wouldn't, if the Republican House continues to pass bills requiring taxpayer dollars be spent on voucher programs that distribute primarily to religious schools that aren't even up to standards. Or we have fairly expensive statuary going in when all that was asked for was some public art.
Instead, we get a filibuster in Missouri preventing the state from re-enrolling in the stimulus-bill program that provided extended weeks of jobless benefit payments to their unemployed, meaning that on Saturday, a lot of people will be cut off from their unemployment benefits. Because four Republicans believe that this money is money that the government doesn't have and that has to be stopped to curb out-of-control spending. Despite the fact that jobless benefits are the most simulative means of federal spending...and we don't hear those same Republicans calling for the immediate stopping of tax loopholes and giveaways to corporations and the people who have money, these Republicans have staked their claim here that fiscal austerity and good modeling starts by screwing the people who need the money the most to stave off a cascade of other problems that are associated with having no income stream. All because these Republicans refuse to believe reality and substitute their own.
We may not get to see the numbers behind situations like these in the future (unless mediated to us by corporations and media conglomerates), as several government entities dedicated to transparency and data sifting are having their budgets axed by the current budget proposal. Because it's a lot easier to lie, cheat, and steal when you know the average person won't be able to sift the data, much less make any sense out of it.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says quite openly that in his vision of the future, Social Security and Medicare do not exist, because they are incompatible with his vision of America, a vision he believes most of the people in the country share.
All said and done, however, there is something to feel potential hope for, as the first of what are hoped to be several recall petitions for state senators in Wisconsin was delivered with about half again as many valid signatures as was needed to initiate the proceedings.
In technology, Google would like to expand their Goggles program so that you can take a picture of a person and have their social media data appear from facial recognition. Because there's nothing quite like giving repressive goernments a tool to identify dissidents discreetly and easily. Google says that someone has to opt-in to the service for someone's picture of them to display their profile data, but the way things are going, it will only be a matter of time before someone is opted-in by default.
In opinions, Ms. Malkin believes that the known anti-gun tendencies of the nomination for Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms director should disqualify him from the position outright. She also makes s econdary case that the nomination should not be confirmed because his subordinates do not like him as a manager, and because he's been involved in teh botched Operation Gunrunner, but that only surfaces briefly in her quest to try and say that the person in charge of the regulation of firearms should not be someone with anti-gun tendencies, backing up her convictions with evidence from groups like the NRA. Well, sure, if all you cite are gun enthusiasts-to-gun nuts, tehn anyone who might interpret the Second Amendment less broadly will be deemed unacceptable. Surely, if she wanted to make a more convincing case, Ms. Malkin could find some sources that are not so heavily biased? Like that angle about how the rank-and-file have misgivings about him? That might actually be convincing.
And working the other side of the room with just as many logical faults, Ms. Coulter turns a solid point about the inconsistency of stated goals and objectives regarding Middle East unrest into a bizzare screed against how much liberals will be vehemently against doing anything in a foreign country that benefits the United States, and uses the Iraq War as her proof for that. One of these things is not like the other, Ms. Coulter. Liberals were hopping mad about Iraq because the justifications that had been sold to the American people turned out to be lies, and not only that, premeditated lies. Had it been sold honestly, it might have gone down in flames, but there would have at least been an actual debate on the merits. You're accusing the administration of hypcorisy, Ms. Coulter, and of not thinking through their engagements, which is a defensible position. Accusing them of deceiving the people about the true reasons for going, however, is not. They've been pretty forthright about why they have and haven't gone into various places, sometimes justifying both positions at once. (Some other commentators have noticed this and are building their case about these Janus positions.)
Last out of opinions, Mr. Moore claims the reason we're having such budget troubles is because we have more people employed by government than manufacturing in all but two states, and we can't get rid of them, and thus we have more people taking our money in taxes to pay their salaries than we do having people who make real goods that actually drive the economy and make it possible for the government employees to draw paychecks. According to the column, if we wanted to modernize and make them more efficient and productive, we could probably cut out all the "dead weight" Mr. Moore imagines exists in governemnt offices, except that the unions of government workers nix that idea as soon as its floated. Things like tenure for teachers make it so they become mediocre, and so our schools become mediocre and have poor results despite more money being spent on them. His solution is simple: All we have to do is make sure those government employees are as perpetually afraid fo their jobs as private sector workers, pay them a little less the insufficiently for their work, like private sector workers, sell off government services to the private sector to be run as profit-driven businesses, and we'll have all our budget problems solved! (Just in time for tax cuts to those people in charge of the corporations that make stuff, because they're important to the economy and we wouldn't survive if they didn't get their six and seven-figure salaries tax-free or as close to it as we can get them.) Because our eceonomy needs to have even less people drawing a steady paycheck to spend than we do now if it wants a hope of recovering.
Last for tonight, the Johnsoning method of campaign creation, using assertions, extensions, and limitations to world-build between the players and referee. Along with a veto in case something objectionable gets suggested that a player or referee can't stand or use.
