![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Up top, notice the large percentage of South / Confederacy members that have reformed themselves as the Tea Party - new name, but the same Southern politics that try to extort or monkey-wrench the rest of the country and enforce their version of Christian Conservatism on the rest of us as preconditions of their lack of opposition to other things.
There's some of that same undercurrent in Alabama's insistence on being flagrantly hostile to all black and brown people under the guise of stopping illegal immigration, a stance that has been challenged by the federal government on the grounds that states cannot decide immigration policy themselves.
Out in the world today, in the coverage of the tragedy of Norway, there was heroism in the highest degree by a married lesbian couple...a story that appears to have been overlooked by the Western press's drive to analyze the killer. Lest one wonder, there are reasons for promoting this kind of story, considering the environment most students and children are growing up in today in the United States.
The Iraqi government gave the green light to attempt to convince the United States to stay past the negotiated withdrawal date of the end of 2011. Well, here's the excuse. Let's see if anyone bites.
Former strongman Hosni Mubarak returned to Egypt in a metal cage to being his trial.
Domestically, A Minnesota school's "Wigger Day" unofficial tradition where white students dressed as caricatures of rappers and gangstas caused emotional distress to the black students at the school. Each year, the school has been swift to shut down the tradition when it appears, but the allegation insists that there should have been a much stronger response to crush the tradition in earlier years. Unfortunately, high school students can be remarkably stubborn about thinking through their actions and realizing their consequences. Which makes it incumbent on the administration to find ways that will stick.
Credit rating agencies continue to threaten the great rating of U.S. bonds, even though the risk of default has now passed. Despite getting their deal, Wall Street realized that there was still the real problem, that of unemployment, staring them in the face, and the stock market dropped sharply. Even so, corporations and the rich are still having record-breaking years in profits, and still laying off more people. The political parties fighting over debt and defecits are doing so to deliberately enrich the rich and coporations. They are no longer fighting for the people that elect them, and they haven't been for years. Which means we need to fix the problem. Somehow.
When you're a large prison in a state known for long sentences and the likelihood that once you're in, you'll stay there, what does the warden do for entertainment? Rodeos where untrained inmates face various bulls in various combinations and all sorts of evangelical programming and messages.
A proposed new directive from Health and Human Services would force insurance companies to insure birth control for all women without premium increases or separate coverage. Unless, that is, you're insured through a religious organization that believes birth control is sinful, then you get nothing.
In tech, a successful demonstration of 800MBps wireless communication using standard LEDs to transmit and a diode to receive. There are still some bugs in the system - namely, it doesn't pass through walls or other opaque bodies like humans. Still, light-speed communication done cheap.
A large-scale cyber attack was revealed by security firm McAffee, who speculated that the attack originated in China.
In opinions, Mr. McGurn seems quite happy that the Republicans got exactly what they wanted out of the debt deal, and with no apparent dark clouds.
Mr. Stephens traverses the alphabet with all the things he thinks have gone wrong (and one right) with the Obama administration.
Finally, Mr. Ryan, architect of a nonserious budget plan, criticizes the President for not providing him with a plan he believes is credible or ith any actual numbers in it, conspicuously choosing not to remember the part of the Constitution that requires all bills regarding revenue and spending to originate in the House of Representatives in his column. A Democratic plan, yes, that he can criticize the Congress for not providing, but the President does not author spending bills, nor can he do anything but sign or veto them when they arrive. Mr. Ryan also discounts several of the liberal caucuses putting forth their own number-filled proposals. Mr. Ryan has forgotten that since his party is in control of the House, it is their responsibility to originate a plan that they can pass, the Senate can pass, and the President can sign. So far, all they have been doing is plans that they can pass and that the Senate will kill, with the exception of the one that would have caused much more damage had it failed than the damage it will cause by passing. It's great for ideological purity and demogougery, but really, really bad at actually getting something done. If Mr. Ryan and Mr. Boehner want to get things done, they will have to either convince the moderates to stick their necks out for ideology, or convince the ideologues to accept something more reasonable.
There's some of that same undercurrent in Alabama's insistence on being flagrantly hostile to all black and brown people under the guise of stopping illegal immigration, a stance that has been challenged by the federal government on the grounds that states cannot decide immigration policy themselves.
Out in the world today, in the coverage of the tragedy of Norway, there was heroism in the highest degree by a married lesbian couple...a story that appears to have been overlooked by the Western press's drive to analyze the killer. Lest one wonder, there are reasons for promoting this kind of story, considering the environment most students and children are growing up in today in the United States.
The Iraqi government gave the green light to attempt to convince the United States to stay past the negotiated withdrawal date of the end of 2011. Well, here's the excuse. Let's see if anyone bites.
Former strongman Hosni Mubarak returned to Egypt in a metal cage to being his trial.
Domestically, A Minnesota school's "Wigger Day" unofficial tradition where white students dressed as caricatures of rappers and gangstas caused emotional distress to the black students at the school. Each year, the school has been swift to shut down the tradition when it appears, but the allegation insists that there should have been a much stronger response to crush the tradition in earlier years. Unfortunately, high school students can be remarkably stubborn about thinking through their actions and realizing their consequences. Which makes it incumbent on the administration to find ways that will stick.
Credit rating agencies continue to threaten the great rating of U.S. bonds, even though the risk of default has now passed. Despite getting their deal, Wall Street realized that there was still the real problem, that of unemployment, staring them in the face, and the stock market dropped sharply. Even so, corporations and the rich are still having record-breaking years in profits, and still laying off more people. The political parties fighting over debt and defecits are doing so to deliberately enrich the rich and coporations. They are no longer fighting for the people that elect them, and they haven't been for years. Which means we need to fix the problem. Somehow.
When you're a large prison in a state known for long sentences and the likelihood that once you're in, you'll stay there, what does the warden do for entertainment? Rodeos where untrained inmates face various bulls in various combinations and all sorts of evangelical programming and messages.
A proposed new directive from Health and Human Services would force insurance companies to insure birth control for all women without premium increases or separate coverage. Unless, that is, you're insured through a religious organization that believes birth control is sinful, then you get nothing.
In tech, a successful demonstration of 800MBps wireless communication using standard LEDs to transmit and a diode to receive. There are still some bugs in the system - namely, it doesn't pass through walls or other opaque bodies like humans. Still, light-speed communication done cheap.
A large-scale cyber attack was revealed by security firm McAffee, who speculated that the attack originated in China.
In opinions, Mr. McGurn seems quite happy that the Republicans got exactly what they wanted out of the debt deal, and with no apparent dark clouds.
Mr. Stephens traverses the alphabet with all the things he thinks have gone wrong (and one right) with the Obama administration.
Finally, Mr. Ryan, architect of a nonserious budget plan, criticizes the President for not providing him with a plan he believes is credible or ith any actual numbers in it, conspicuously choosing not to remember the part of the Constitution that requires all bills regarding revenue and spending to originate in the House of Representatives in his column. A Democratic plan, yes, that he can criticize the Congress for not providing, but the President does not author spending bills, nor can he do anything but sign or veto them when they arrive. Mr. Ryan also discounts several of the liberal caucuses putting forth their own number-filled proposals. Mr. Ryan has forgotten that since his party is in control of the House, it is their responsibility to originate a plan that they can pass, the Senate can pass, and the President can sign. So far, all they have been doing is plans that they can pass and that the Senate will kill, with the exception of the one that would have caused much more damage had it failed than the damage it will cause by passing. It's great for ideological purity and demogougery, but really, really bad at actually getting something done. If Mr. Ryan and Mr. Boehner want to get things done, they will have to either convince the moderates to stick their necks out for ideology, or convince the ideologues to accept something more reasonable.
