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Closing out the month - 28-30 June 02011
Jul. 1st, 2011 09:51 amWell, I suppose it is a sign from the universe that I had too much clutter in my tabs or something, but Firefox, you're a stupid, stupid thing when you only remember the very last session, so that if someone happens to close my browser window before I've restored it (or I forget to restore before exiting), you forget the whole damn thing. No love, me. (And worse, since it's Firefox Portable, there's probably no way of delving into the thing to extract the actual session that I wanted to get back.) So, I guess it wasn't important, whatever it was. There's an add-on now installed that will hopefully stop that kind of stupidity from happening again by keeping a longer memory.
What began as an article about the need for a culture that permits sexual violence and protects those who commit it drew the attention of someone who felt the need to mansplain. Women shouldn't trust men, says he, because men are completely under the control of their penises and will rape anyone who gives a sign to any man that she might be interested in sex. So clearly they must not dress in anything that might be misconstrued as sexy, be alone with anyone male, or anything else that might lead to rape, or she shouldn't be surprised when she gets raped. When called to the carpet on such a matter, the editor responded by claiming that his column was meant to be provocative, and all of the people who sent him nasty messages and called for his dismissal are just trying to censor uncomfortable conversation, which renders any "lessons" he believes he learned from all of it rather moot, as the ego saying "I'm right and nothing can change that" is still getting in the way of the possibilities for more constructive engagement and learning all around, even though the text indicates that the ideas that needed to get across have at least been received and processed.
There is also a petition underway requesting the sacking of the editor for his remarks.
Although he's not legislators or governors, and thus he doesn't have the ability to require extra burdens be placed on anywhere that provides abortion services, release the regulations far too close to when the inspectors would be arriving and then try to make it sound like the result of no clinic being able to pass the regulatory test wasn't the intended result, making abortion impossible but not actually contravening Roe v. Wade.
Out in the world today, Greece! General strikes and confrontations between the people and their government. The austerity measures proposed by the government draw protests, some peaceful, some violent, the riot police (who are always good at both antagonizing and keeping peace all at the same time), and demonstrations against the government's course of action. Which, in this case, appears to involve at least 50 billion EUR in state assets sold to private companies to ensure that the bankers responsible for the bailout are made whole. Despite the protests, the bill passed by a narrow margin.
Attackers and bombers raided a hotel thought mostly secure in Afghanistan, setting back ideas of just how much progress has been made in containing the violence and training appropriate security replacements.
Crank the Iran fear up a notch more as Iran unveils underground missile silos capable of firing missiles at least to Israel and United States bases in the Persian Gulf.
A new study indicates those who have been shielded from the idea of having to personally fight war are much more likely to advocate for it. Thus, the draft-dodgers and those who have been shielded from the consequences, economic or familial, of war are much more willing to send other people in to go die for their ideologies. The serious threat of Selective Service might make a lot of people a lot more anti-war, because then it starts being about them, instead of Someone Else.
In the United States, wildfires around the Los Alamos, New Mexico nuclear research area have the Environmental Protection Agency and others testing the air to ensure that there aren't radiation leaks.
A selection of Democratic Senators are advancing the notion that the debt ceiling, or limit to federal government borrowing, is against the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, and that to default on any debt payment would be unconstitutional.
an effort to recall a anti-union bill passed by the legislature of Ohio and put it to the people gathered more than one million signatures (which require verification) in its favor. This is about double the previous record for signatures gathered, and should fairly easily meet the threshold erquired to put the question to the people.
On the question of immigration, a Georgia Republican mayor is fighting against Georgia's restrictive laws, ones that would criminalize driving undocumented workers in your car, although they're not quite as harsh as Alabama's law, which makes merely being undocumented in Alabama a crime. For a place where one of the top Judges makes it a point to prominently display the laws of Moses, Alabama seems to have significant trouble realizing the commands are about welcoming the alien into your society. As do other laws and states passing those laws and then claiming undocumented workers should be afraid of reporting crimes done to them for fear of their own deportation. It's pretty easy to find pockets for criminals to hide in if all the neighbors there are afraid of reporting the criminals because they'll be sent away if they do.
Expect a campaign slogan from conservatives about the First Land War In Asia, as Senator Graham lets it be known that the option chosen by the President was not one presented to him by the commanders, and thus there's plenty of fodder there about how the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is ignoring he sage advice of his generals in a rush to try and placate (his ultraliberal base/George Soros/his Muslim overlords).
In technology, a ballpoint pen for the sketching of ink circuits.
In opinions, Mr. Lindsey says that for all their talk about deficit reduction, everyone's committing the planning fallacy, expecting bond rates to stay low, growth to stay abnormally high, and for some employers to not dump all their employees into the state-run insurance exchanges to save themselves money. If any of those scenarios comes to pass, says he, the costs of debt financing wipe out even the Ryan plan's vaunted savings and still have a little left over to punish the country with. So serious debt reduction should be aiming even higher than what's already there. (Since it's in the WSJ, entitlement spending is mentioned, of course, and nothing at all of the other big one, "defense" spending.)
Mr. Stewart joins the chorus in saying that a planned withdrawal from Afghanistan is too risky and will undo all the gains that have been accomplished there. One wonders what sort of gains they are that after ten years of fighting, the mere removal of the surge troops will be enough to undo it all. Perhaps one should be thinking about whether the last ten years have been worthwhile, instead. That said, expect very few to say that it was a mistake, without any other attachments. Plenty will be said that the troops should be withdrawn, because the mission there isn't about real freedom, and then we must realize that Islam is The Bloodthirsty Religion and zealously oppose it wherever it may be, for example, which allows someone to save fave about the First Land War in Asia by saying that it's Islam's fault Team America couldn't succeed. Or they'll say time to take the troops out, but we can still blame Obama if the necessary diplomatic and native strength-building exercises fail, because Obama should have been negotiating hard with Karzai, rather than spending his effort opposing Republicans.
Ms. Andersen rightly calls out the member states of the UN for not doing more to prevent the trafficking of humans for sex or other purposes, but attributes the reticence of those states to their unwillingness to say that some human rights are derived from the Being Represented By The Tetragrammaton. Which sounds more like "Because those states aren't Christian, they are barbaric and we should treat them as such, regardless of what they do." The bit later on about the ineffective Human Rights Council is just there as further criticism of the UN's willingness to let countries that probably shouldn't be sitting on a human rights committee sit on that committee. Ms. Andersen's Christocentric worldview is only a compelling argument to those that already share it. To actually convince others, she needs better arguments, which could easily be obtained has she gone with the human rights violations angle instead of turning to one particular deity.
Considering there is a federal holiday Monday Next, the columnists are getting their flag-waving in early. Mr. Sowell stakes out his position as champion of the population against the Progressives, who believe they're smarter than you and thus deserve to rule you, and are working hard to undermine the Constitution that prevents them from setting themselves up as kings, philosopher- or otherwise. Mr. Sowell is advised to look at the manner in which corporations are routinely permitted to rule us all, as well as provide their funds to elect politicians beholden to them, and at the personal wealth of many of those who hold federal office and campaign for it. A government by the people would have a lot more people earning 50,000 or less per year and holding down their job while campaigning and less of persons who are independently wealthy enough to finance their own campaigns without having to do paid work.
Mr. Hanson chooses American Exceptionalism as the place to plant his flag, where "exceptional" means "each person given the opportunity to succeed or fail by their own merits, instead of a government-controlled life picking winners and losers from their own social elite". Were the country that Mr. Hanson is sure is exceptional actually anywhere near that ideal of its founding, it would indeed be exceptional, for it would have found a way to resist the corruption that wealth brings for more than two hundred years. We salute Mr. Hanson's cling to the ideals of the Republic, but we request that he open his eyes as to how far the rot has gone, on both conservative and liberal faces of power, to see the connections to the special interests, the corporations, and the wealthy that have permeated what is supposed to be a government by the people, including even the judiciary that is supposed to be the final bulwark against that corruption.
For something closer to the ideals of that holiday, we present the renewal of a protest in Saudi Arabia against restrictive rules that say women cannot drive themselves - fighting for their rights, the women protest the decisions of the government, risking arrest and worse to do so. That's more like the country conservatives are claiming fealty to.
And on the matter of the decision by New York State to allow marriage of gays and lesbians, Mr. Olsen says that the doomsayers are being proven wrong, and that this decision is superior to other ones in that it was passed by a legislature instead of court fiat, but that its still a good idea to exempt religious organizations from being prosecuted or sued under discrimination law for asserting their religious beliefs and denying services to gays and lesbians. His argument is that in examples where anti-discrimination law was applied stringently, the religious organizations, or their memberships, rebelled and services like adoption got worse because there was no accompanying secular structure to step in. Which, to me, sounds more like an argument for developing robust secular structures for those things that are normally farmed out to religious services and then enforcing the discrimination laws on anyone who wants to participate in that secular structure, religious or no, while letting those religious organizations operate themselves individually or collectively outside the secular structure as much as they can be if they don't want to conform to the law.
For a more hard-line, unforgiving approach to the matter, Ms. Gallagher, chair of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) accuses the Republicans of New York State of betraying their party and its values in voting for the passage of the bill, and in acting against the will of the people, which will have obvious electoral consequences. Ms. Gallagher cites as her evidence a poll commissioned by a group that has no expectations of being fair or unbiased, asserts without evidence that "the people" still believe that hetero-marriage is superior, that gay marriage is not marriage at all, and that children of lesbians and gay men miss having the other-gendered parent to raise them. (On that last point, we have studies that repeatedly show the children of same-sex parents are just as well-adjusted as those who have opposite-sex parents. Do The Research, please, Ms. Gallagher.) Her main argument that same-sex marriage is not marriage and The People never believe it is, however, relies on the failure of referenda in the various states, which unlike electoral votes, often have different requirements for passage that simple majority, and only count those who show up to vote, a demographic that skews highly toward older and more conservative groups (and has several governors and legislatures working more earnestly to ensure that the older, more conservative groups are the only people who can vote). If Ms. Gallagher were to take the vote of all persons eligible to vote, instead of those who just show up, she might find some of those referenda passing instead of failing. The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department would like a word, Ms. Gallagher...
Last out of opinions, Ms. Coulter suggests that the appropriate response to a prominent conservative being harassed by an impolite group is to visit physical violence upon them, at which point the liberals will retreat, wailing about the injustice of having been hit for their impoliteness. She also believes, of course, that liberals only come out in mobs, are the only people that would be so rude as to publicly harass a prominent figure for their views, and enjoy the protection of prosecutors and others who will not charge them for boorish behavior. One only wonders when someone will point out to her that none of them have been shot or even shot at for their views yet, when many liberal advocates, or even doctors wanting to provide care for women, have been shot, shot at, bombed, threatened, and otherwise harassed, both by the public and by legislators, for their views.
What began as an article about the need for a culture that permits sexual violence and protects those who commit it drew the attention of someone who felt the need to mansplain. Women shouldn't trust men, says he, because men are completely under the control of their penises and will rape anyone who gives a sign to any man that she might be interested in sex. So clearly they must not dress in anything that might be misconstrued as sexy, be alone with anyone male, or anything else that might lead to rape, or she shouldn't be surprised when she gets raped. When called to the carpet on such a matter, the editor responded by claiming that his column was meant to be provocative, and all of the people who sent him nasty messages and called for his dismissal are just trying to censor uncomfortable conversation, which renders any "lessons" he believes he learned from all of it rather moot, as the ego saying "I'm right and nothing can change that" is still getting in the way of the possibilities for more constructive engagement and learning all around, even though the text indicates that the ideas that needed to get across have at least been received and processed.
There is also a petition underway requesting the sacking of the editor for his remarks.
Although he's not legislators or governors, and thus he doesn't have the ability to require extra burdens be placed on anywhere that provides abortion services, release the regulations far too close to when the inspectors would be arriving and then try to make it sound like the result of no clinic being able to pass the regulatory test wasn't the intended result, making abortion impossible but not actually contravening Roe v. Wade.
Out in the world today, Greece! General strikes and confrontations between the people and their government. The austerity measures proposed by the government draw protests, some peaceful, some violent, the riot police (who are always good at both antagonizing and keeping peace all at the same time), and demonstrations against the government's course of action. Which, in this case, appears to involve at least 50 billion EUR in state assets sold to private companies to ensure that the bankers responsible for the bailout are made whole. Despite the protests, the bill passed by a narrow margin.
Attackers and bombers raided a hotel thought mostly secure in Afghanistan, setting back ideas of just how much progress has been made in containing the violence and training appropriate security replacements.
Crank the Iran fear up a notch more as Iran unveils underground missile silos capable of firing missiles at least to Israel and United States bases in the Persian Gulf.
A new study indicates those who have been shielded from the idea of having to personally fight war are much more likely to advocate for it. Thus, the draft-dodgers and those who have been shielded from the consequences, economic or familial, of war are much more willing to send other people in to go die for their ideologies. The serious threat of Selective Service might make a lot of people a lot more anti-war, because then it starts being about them, instead of Someone Else.
In the United States, wildfires around the Los Alamos, New Mexico nuclear research area have the Environmental Protection Agency and others testing the air to ensure that there aren't radiation leaks.
A selection of Democratic Senators are advancing the notion that the debt ceiling, or limit to federal government borrowing, is against the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, and that to default on any debt payment would be unconstitutional.
an effort to recall a anti-union bill passed by the legislature of Ohio and put it to the people gathered more than one million signatures (which require verification) in its favor. This is about double the previous record for signatures gathered, and should fairly easily meet the threshold erquired to put the question to the people.
On the question of immigration, a Georgia Republican mayor is fighting against Georgia's restrictive laws, ones that would criminalize driving undocumented workers in your car, although they're not quite as harsh as Alabama's law, which makes merely being undocumented in Alabama a crime. For a place where one of the top Judges makes it a point to prominently display the laws of Moses, Alabama seems to have significant trouble realizing the commands are about welcoming the alien into your society. As do other laws and states passing those laws and then claiming undocumented workers should be afraid of reporting crimes done to them for fear of their own deportation. It's pretty easy to find pockets for criminals to hide in if all the neighbors there are afraid of reporting the criminals because they'll be sent away if they do.
Expect a campaign slogan from conservatives about the First Land War In Asia, as Senator Graham lets it be known that the option chosen by the President was not one presented to him by the commanders, and thus there's plenty of fodder there about how the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is ignoring he sage advice of his generals in a rush to try and placate (his ultraliberal base/George Soros/his Muslim overlords).
In technology, a ballpoint pen for the sketching of ink circuits.
In opinions, Mr. Lindsey says that for all their talk about deficit reduction, everyone's committing the planning fallacy, expecting bond rates to stay low, growth to stay abnormally high, and for some employers to not dump all their employees into the state-run insurance exchanges to save themselves money. If any of those scenarios comes to pass, says he, the costs of debt financing wipe out even the Ryan plan's vaunted savings and still have a little left over to punish the country with. So serious debt reduction should be aiming even higher than what's already there. (Since it's in the WSJ, entitlement spending is mentioned, of course, and nothing at all of the other big one, "defense" spending.)
Mr. Stewart joins the chorus in saying that a planned withdrawal from Afghanistan is too risky and will undo all the gains that have been accomplished there. One wonders what sort of gains they are that after ten years of fighting, the mere removal of the surge troops will be enough to undo it all. Perhaps one should be thinking about whether the last ten years have been worthwhile, instead. That said, expect very few to say that it was a mistake, without any other attachments. Plenty will be said that the troops should be withdrawn, because the mission there isn't about real freedom, and then we must realize that Islam is The Bloodthirsty Religion and zealously oppose it wherever it may be, for example, which allows someone to save fave about the First Land War in Asia by saying that it's Islam's fault Team America couldn't succeed. Or they'll say time to take the troops out, but we can still blame Obama if the necessary diplomatic and native strength-building exercises fail, because Obama should have been negotiating hard with Karzai, rather than spending his effort opposing Republicans.
Ms. Andersen rightly calls out the member states of the UN for not doing more to prevent the trafficking of humans for sex or other purposes, but attributes the reticence of those states to their unwillingness to say that some human rights are derived from the Being Represented By The Tetragrammaton. Which sounds more like "Because those states aren't Christian, they are barbaric and we should treat them as such, regardless of what they do." The bit later on about the ineffective Human Rights Council is just there as further criticism of the UN's willingness to let countries that probably shouldn't be sitting on a human rights committee sit on that committee. Ms. Andersen's Christocentric worldview is only a compelling argument to those that already share it. To actually convince others, she needs better arguments, which could easily be obtained has she gone with the human rights violations angle instead of turning to one particular deity.
Considering there is a federal holiday Monday Next, the columnists are getting their flag-waving in early. Mr. Sowell stakes out his position as champion of the population against the Progressives, who believe they're smarter than you and thus deserve to rule you, and are working hard to undermine the Constitution that prevents them from setting themselves up as kings, philosopher- or otherwise. Mr. Sowell is advised to look at the manner in which corporations are routinely permitted to rule us all, as well as provide their funds to elect politicians beholden to them, and at the personal wealth of many of those who hold federal office and campaign for it. A government by the people would have a lot more people earning 50,000 or less per year and holding down their job while campaigning and less of persons who are independently wealthy enough to finance their own campaigns without having to do paid work.
Mr. Hanson chooses American Exceptionalism as the place to plant his flag, where "exceptional" means "each person given the opportunity to succeed or fail by their own merits, instead of a government-controlled life picking winners and losers from their own social elite". Were the country that Mr. Hanson is sure is exceptional actually anywhere near that ideal of its founding, it would indeed be exceptional, for it would have found a way to resist the corruption that wealth brings for more than two hundred years. We salute Mr. Hanson's cling to the ideals of the Republic, but we request that he open his eyes as to how far the rot has gone, on both conservative and liberal faces of power, to see the connections to the special interests, the corporations, and the wealthy that have permeated what is supposed to be a government by the people, including even the judiciary that is supposed to be the final bulwark against that corruption.
For something closer to the ideals of that holiday, we present the renewal of a protest in Saudi Arabia against restrictive rules that say women cannot drive themselves - fighting for their rights, the women protest the decisions of the government, risking arrest and worse to do so. That's more like the country conservatives are claiming fealty to.
And on the matter of the decision by New York State to allow marriage of gays and lesbians, Mr. Olsen says that the doomsayers are being proven wrong, and that this decision is superior to other ones in that it was passed by a legislature instead of court fiat, but that its still a good idea to exempt religious organizations from being prosecuted or sued under discrimination law for asserting their religious beliefs and denying services to gays and lesbians. His argument is that in examples where anti-discrimination law was applied stringently, the religious organizations, or their memberships, rebelled and services like adoption got worse because there was no accompanying secular structure to step in. Which, to me, sounds more like an argument for developing robust secular structures for those things that are normally farmed out to religious services and then enforcing the discrimination laws on anyone who wants to participate in that secular structure, religious or no, while letting those religious organizations operate themselves individually or collectively outside the secular structure as much as they can be if they don't want to conform to the law.
For a more hard-line, unforgiving approach to the matter, Ms. Gallagher, chair of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) accuses the Republicans of New York State of betraying their party and its values in voting for the passage of the bill, and in acting against the will of the people, which will have obvious electoral consequences. Ms. Gallagher cites as her evidence a poll commissioned by a group that has no expectations of being fair or unbiased, asserts without evidence that "the people" still believe that hetero-marriage is superior, that gay marriage is not marriage at all, and that children of lesbians and gay men miss having the other-gendered parent to raise them. (On that last point, we have studies that repeatedly show the children of same-sex parents are just as well-adjusted as those who have opposite-sex parents. Do The Research, please, Ms. Gallagher.) Her main argument that same-sex marriage is not marriage and The People never believe it is, however, relies on the failure of referenda in the various states, which unlike electoral votes, often have different requirements for passage that simple majority, and only count those who show up to vote, a demographic that skews highly toward older and more conservative groups (and has several governors and legislatures working more earnestly to ensure that the older, more conservative groups are the only people who can vote). If Ms. Gallagher were to take the vote of all persons eligible to vote, instead of those who just show up, she might find some of those referenda passing instead of failing. The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department would like a word, Ms. Gallagher...
Last out of opinions, Ms. Coulter suggests that the appropriate response to a prominent conservative being harassed by an impolite group is to visit physical violence upon them, at which point the liberals will retreat, wailing about the injustice of having been hit for their impoliteness. She also believes, of course, that liberals only come out in mobs, are the only people that would be so rude as to publicly harass a prominent figure for their views, and enjoy the protection of prosecutors and others who will not charge them for boorish behavior. One only wonders when someone will point out to her that none of them have been shot or even shot at for their views yet, when many liberal advocates, or even doctors wanting to provide care for women, have been shot, shot at, bombed, threatened, and otherwise harassed, both by the public and by legislators, for their views.
