Sep. 11th, 2011

silveradept: The emblem of the Heartless, a heart with an X of thorns and a fleur-de-lis at the bottom instead of the normal point. (Heartless)
At the beginning of the post, Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, has joined the Dead Pool Typographer's organization at 64 years of age.

And should you beleive that the labor movement is useless, recall all the nice things they got for you...and how hard they fought to make sure that incidents like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire never happen again. So that when unions are blamed for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States, because their demands for livable wages and working conditions make capital decide to oursource, you can remember who is really responsible for the shedding of jobs from the country. (And no, you don't get to blame the President solely, either. No matter how many of his policies you don't like, it's not solely his fault.)

Out in the world today, as we arrive on an anniversary of a major terror attack in the United States, remember that terror doesn't kill as much as you think, nor does it recruit as well as the media would have you believe, but it is a wonderful excuse to curtail liberties and expand the national security state while you're afraid. If you are part of al-Jazeera, you may find yourself run out of a high school football game in Texas, although if you ask the people there, it was because he wanted to film and interview people on school grounds without permission. In any case, even ten years afterward, much of the United States still has problems with Muslims.

The right of the United States wants you to remember the 11 September attacks with the same emotions that you experienced the day of the event. Just remember to stay afraid of terror, whether foreign or domestic, and you'll get along fine. Wisdom is something that has fled us over the intervening time, while the fear is still being stoked. Even if we had pursued anger instead of fear when it happened, much of the intervening atrocities could have been avoided.

Should you propose, say, a day of service to try and bring communities together, instead of using the day to demonize Muslims and Islam, you will be accused of "defiling" the rememberance. If you think that Muslims should be allowed to voluntarily choose courts that rule based on the religious laws (where they don't conflict with the civil laws), then you're supporting the Bloodthirsty Religion's intent to take over all the civil courts and force everyone to live by their laws. Because once you let the little things in, it will always end with all the big objectionable things coming in, too. (Domino Theory, anyone?) Oh, and you're also in favor of the persecution of Christians in majority-Muslim countries.

More rationally, they will claim sucess in the Global War On Terror because of the First Land War In Asia and all the covert operations worldwide, because the laws of war don't apply to the un-uniformed, and criminal law doesn't prevent, only punish. (And then say that Iraq was unnecessary and hope that the war doesn't escalate to a war against Islam, at the least, we hope.) They believe all the things that were done after the attacks were necessary, and the Democratic president continuing them only validates that they were entirely correct. They will also claim government gets in the way of effective homeland security, because of whatever their pet peeve is that government does, be it contractors, favors, or what have you.

That said, I expect a significant amount of hair-pulling over rumors that the Second Land War in Asia will only have 3,000 United States troops involved. Even though there's no official status to those numbers.

Although, if there is something to be miffed (or proud) about for the last ten years... it's that the policies of the previous administrator have been continued by the current one.

And there's still more in the wings. After all, there's always the hunt for a way to start the Third Land War in Asia, in case the other two die off prematurely. And always someone saying that the country should not move on, but carry the scar and poke at it routinely just to be sure the memory is fresh.

A Scottish judge has fined one of the citizens for breaching the peace, and tacked on an extra amount due to transgender prejudice.

Archaeological ruins in Austria reveal the workings of a gladiator school from the 3rd century C.E., and it's a mix of modern prison life and military barracks life.

Scholars are deeply studying the Hebrew Bible, charting the evolutions, mistakes, and changes to the text from its origins in an attempt to produce the most scholarly-accurate and comprehensive version of the texts - such a process has only produced three scrolls to this point, and they've been at it for decades.

Last out, Protesters in Egypt tore down a wall erected to protect the Israeli embassy in complaint over alleged attacks, after a bigger protest trying to get the interim government to move forward toward installing a permanent democratic government. - At least, the frame is that the attack on the ISraeli embassy is more important than the protesta bout Egypt. Watch how your articles present themselves.

In the United States, first, examine this chart to learn where the current declared candidates for President stand on the issue of equality of marriage (and other issues of equality) for all. Notice a lot of "no" there, and realize that the people The Corporations are approving for you are out of step with your own beliefs, in many cases. To the point where they are deliberately sabotaging democratic government, adding roadblocks to voting, and keeping the amount of information low so they can institute their own authoritarian and fringe ways when they get elected. If you look at it, you see vestiges of how the CIA suggested and acted against countries We Don't Like to destablize them and make them ready for revolution.

Second, The president spoke to a joint session of Congress about his plan to get the economy going. The question now is whether or not the Congress decides to pass such a bill, or decides to filibuster and obstruct. Based on past performance, I don't expect any legislative movement. After the speech, rather than put it all into one e-mail, there were many e-mails sent about all the endorsements the Presidential jobs plan has.

According to a whistleblower in the organization, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the U.S. is destroying records of closed cases in violation of the laws that require archiving of those records.

The Postal Service believes it will default on retiree payments unless it is able to lay off a significant portion of its workforce and recover what it believes are overpaid pension payments. Despite this issue, the defense department insists that it couldn't possibly withstand any more cuts to its budget.

The population of the United States would like to throw all the bums out, and are dissatisfied enough with the people in charge that they want to go to the other pole and let them have a try, despite the problem that both sides have been pretty bad at getting the people what they actually want.

In tech, a possible vector for attack against big companies - squat their typodomains, set up e-mail forwarding, and harvest all the e-mail sent.

In opinions, after Representative Maxine Waters invited the Tea Party to go to hell, Mr. Pendry responds by saying "There are more Tea Partiers in this country than your communists and victim mentality followers, Ms. Waters, and I'm so generous, I'll pray for God to release us all from your Satanic, Communist, control". We put this next to Tait Trussel's insistence that Huxley is correct and Obama will manipulate the ignorant and dependent to vote for him because...well, anyone claiming that only one side is trying to make sure there are no informed voters is lying to you.

Mr. Cheney swings his anti-Obama stick by insinuating that Hillary Clinton would have been a better president for Republicans. I have to wonder in what way, considering that the Republicans still continue to get everything they want and more because of their tactical intransigence. In our alternate universe, I'm blogging about how Mr. Cheney is insinuating that the black man would have been better because at least he was a man.

Mr. Sowell believes we should judge corporations and their leaders solely on how much profit they make, rather than how they make it and what they do with that fantastic wealth afterward, because if you actually put a social justice component to wealth and its distribution, you create all the "chavs" in England that are rioting and resentful of everyone for not giving them everything they want, and mistakenly attack their betters for having done actual work. Mr. Whalen tells us that while Keynes is right, in our current environment, we have to do the opposite of stimulus before the capital investors will feel like investing, because they're apparently petrified that government might cut into their profits by raising taxes or drafting new regulations to protect workers and help pay for all the defecits being run. Only once government has abdicated their role will businesses decide to invest again. Which means if the President wants to have any hope of seeing economic recovery, and not getting blamed for everything on his watch, he must immediately become a Republican and govern as such.

In his rush to portray the President as small and ineffective, Mr. McGurn freely admits that the elected representatives of the Republican Party would never let anything the President propsed become actuality, thus pointing out the roadblock in the way in his rush to ask "Why isn't the President going anywhere?" So when reports start coming out about the tricks and shifts involved in making the stimulus money move faster in the face of criticism, and the inefficiency of its spending, remember that what someone got had to go through the legislature and the party that didn't want any of that to happen in the first place.

Not that there are too many conservatives pulling for Mitt Romney, either. He gets a damning with faint praise from the WSJ, who like the little things in his jobs proposal because they're anti-Obama, but they don's think he goes far enough to the right on all of his major economic proposals.

The Cato Institute calls for the end of both the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, considering them both to be too expensive and to have paid out far too much money in error, abuse, and to illegal immigrants, (who are apparently collecting those credits despite not having the proper documentation to file an income tax return...)

Last out of opinions, Ms. Jolis walks up to the edge of the line of "New science says it's cosmic rays, not humans, causing climate change! Nyeah!" but doesn't cross it, implying that the "settled consenseus" wasn't interested in an experiemnt that could falsify them and delayed it for their own politics for a long time.

Last for tonight, disclosure is good, but insufficient. Integrity is still the best requirement for journalism and any conflicts of interest.
silveradept: The emblem of Organization XIII from the Kingdom Hearts series of video games. (Organization XIII)
So the original idea behind the posting was to take a word and show off some icons you haven't used before. Well, I don't have icons I haven't used before. But I figured I could do something else with the word. Maybe a drabble or something.

And so what word should come up but "Help". Huh. Go figure.

I need help.

I need help because a professional salary is enough to take care of one person and their loans, but it's not enough to take care of two people and their animals, too. Even after trying to cut the expenses as much as possible.

I need help because I don't think I have any other marketable skills to offer to make up the difference. I don't draw, edit, or compose. About all I could theoretically do is write, and there are much better writers than me around.

I need help because I've been told that perfection is the acceptable standard at work, had it demonstrated that my manager will willingly invoke the discipline process for mistakes from the perfection, and then when I told my manager and her boss what the (clearly not acceptable) logical end-point of what those two things were telling me, they looked at me bemusedly and said "What are you going to do to fix your problem?" Thus, I need help because I'm at the whim of my manager as to whether there's more discipline, probation, or possibly dismissal, and that stresses me out greatly.

I need help because my animals are sick much of the time - diabetic dog, incontinent cat, dominance fights, shredding the treats, and all the rest. I need help to grieve over the cat that died earlier this year.

I need help because I can't spend time doing what I normally do to relieve stress, because the house requires repair, the yard requires maintenance, and there's no time, really.

I need help, even though I'm sure that what I'm talking about is problems of the first world, and there are so many other greater problems, and I'd like to be dictator for just long enough to make all of those problems go away, so that small problems really are the only problems that we have to deal with.

I need help because I have really low self-esteem about myself, and that what most people consider success, I simply consider Not Failing, so that when something that does look like failure happens, I take it personally and hard.

I need help, because I do my very best to show how much I don't need help, to seem like the ducks on the water just placidly floating along and not to show the furious paddling that goes on underneath the water to maintain that illusion. (I also know that most of you do the same thing and are trying not to show your own paddling, either. You're very good at it, I assure you.)

I need help. But I know full well that you probably need help, too, and don't have a whole lot to spare.

And the funniest thing is, what I do for work is help. I help people who are out of work apply for it, polish their documents, learn the tricks of the Internet and new systems, and go from unemployed to optimistic.

I help parents and children find the research they need, the entertainment they want, and the stuff that will likely change their lives in obvious and subtle ways.

I help people who get new devices make them work. I help people whose devices aren't working get back on track.

I can help. And I need help.

Help.

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silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
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