And another week gone - 7-15 April 02012
Apr. 15th, 2012 06:48 pmGreetings. Shall we start with the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, entering a burning building to rescue the inhabitants within, a rescue that is compeltely successful?
Second,![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
crowgirl113 offers up a forum to state one's needs, or to help someone else with their needs.
Moving from hero to hero, an alternative framing of the Triple role, based on the main characters of a Cashore trilogy - Katsa, Fire, Bitterblue, Warrior, Healer, Queen.
And speaking of the feminine...by the way, that may have been your last piece of good news for the entry... why, again, aren't there riots in the streets about the way that Republicans are attempting to revert any and all progress made to make it so that women could approach equal footing with men. Is it perhaps because some people believe the premise that the liberal attitude toward sex and sexuality has been more damaging to women, by allowing men to father children and abandon them, while failing to acknowledge (or glossing right over) the fact staring them in the face that lower-income women have less access to things like birth control and contraception and that less educated people have a harder time finding jobs that can actually pay enough to have and raise a family? Well, when they try to make that argument to the younger generation, they fail. Marriage as societal cure-all doesn't fly as a convincing argument, not without good evidence to back it up, and even then, there are a lot of young people who think there are other reasons.
Ah, and Arizona now counts the beginning of a pregnancy as the last day of a menstrual period before getting pregnant. Which means that Arizona now might consider you to have been pregnant for quite some time before there was even conception. Arizona also insists that people geting abortions because the baby won't survive due to unfortunate defects get counseling, that a medication abortion be performed by a doctor who has medical privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the spot where the abortion will be happening, rather than, say, at home, and that an ultrasound is required a day before the abortion...and minors need parental permissions. Both of those wree already in place, just getting reaffirmed.
Out in the world today - North Korea launched their rocket...which failed near the end of the first stage and broke apart, scattering its pieces into the ocean. Which has columnists suggesting that this will make the North Koreans less likely to come to talks about anything because of the loss of faace.
Domestically, Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign, making Willard "Mitt" Romney the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party for 2012. Which is probably the best result for Republicans that they can get, in terms of candidates, as Mr. Romney has always been the one closest to President Obama in the opinion polls. With the addition of dark-money groups going for him, Mr. Romney can mount a strong campaign. Assuming, that is, he doesn't end up fracturing the party and having some of the Republican supporters sitting out this session.
George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin and claimed it was self-defense, has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The arrest of Mr. Zimmerman has conservatives clamoring that Mr. Zimmerman is the victim of racism from the black Attorney General at the direction of the black President who both listen to a discredited black radical, Reverend Sharpton. The case will hopefully be enlightening as to how far the protections involved in laws about "standing your ground" go, and what kind of evidence one would need to successfully argue that the danger was a threat that required the use of deadly force.
UC Davis commissioned an independent investigation into the Occupy attack by police, involving very strong pepper spray and lots of police abuse, and the report is in. [PDF at link]. The report is significantly worse than the media coverage set it out to be - lots of people claiming they made it clear things weren't supposed to go that way, but they did anyway. The police ignored their own procedures, used equipment that was illegal for them to own and use for the situation, and also were not deliberately clear about how they wanted things to go down...plus an officer that claims the orders they received were illegal or un-do-able, and decided to just go forward with their own judgment anyway, instead of refusing the order and demanding a better one. Ugh.
Last out, a case study on how some churches pervert the message in the Christian Foundational Writings to build authoritarian structures from which a member cannot leave, cannot be restored to grace but on the whims of the church's leader, and that will dog the member if they choose to leave the church rather than be forced through the whimsical discipline process.
In technology, iris scanners, passport control systems, and other biometric identity-tracking devices are making it harder for spies to do their work, because you start flagging systems when the names don't match and the biometrics do.
In opinions, Messrs. Gaines and Rivers take a poll indicating most people don't want high taxes on gambling winnings, like lotteries, as an indicator that most people don't want taxes on high incomes at all. In doing so, they ignore what appears to be the logical conclusion - most people think that getting rich by luck is something to keep most of, perhaps because we can imagine that happening to us. Being rich by design, by profession, or by business usually engenders the feeling that those people can afford to pay a little more in taxes, because they consistently are making more instead of having a one-time payment. There's probably an experiment one could run to confirm this thought process.
Messers. Foster and Dubay consider the resurrection of the discussion about the "Buffet Rule" to be a distraction from the real issues of how much the President&apos policies don't work, won't work, and haven't worked. Ms. Miller echoes this issue, claiming that increased tax rates won't help, and that the rich already pay sooo much of taxes... but Mr. Thornton is the clearest about this idea - he calls all the related talk class warfare that doesn't have anything to do with fidxing the economy. The other prong of the attack is Mr. Henninger's defense of Paul Ryan's budget as something that's feasible and superior to the President's alternative.
The WSJ prefers to keep their feet on the idea that lower capital gains tax rates translate to more actual revenue, because people who invest prefer to have instruments that have lower tax rates on their profits and dividends. That, at least, is a logical argument. I think it exposes the underlying problem that making money is often oriented toward making the most and hoarding it, rather than making lots of it and being able to turn it back into more investment or social good. The WSJ also exposes the weakness of raising tax rates - if sufficient loopholes are left in the tax code, then enterprising accountants will ensure that the effective tax rate stays as low as possible through the exploitation of those loopholes. They then go on to argue that the rates shouldn't be raised because the loopholes will make it moot, rather than arguing that if the government really wanted more revenues, they should work on closing out the loopholes and rates that make it possible for the rich to shift their wealth in such a way as to pay as little tax as possible. So, instead, we'll have Mr. Benen do that, saying that enacting the Buffet Rule would be closing a loophole, and that the specifics put forward by the President are far better than relying on magic maths as presented by Mr. Ryan's budget.
And Heritage says states should not be able to collect sales taxes from on-line retailers that have no presence in their state. They paint state governments as greedily seeking new sources of revenue from everyone, but it might be a stronger argument for them to say that the people who have the least to spend in income are the ones that would be hardest hit by having to pay sales taxes on everything. Of course, in doing so, they would be admitting that poor people do, in fact, pay lots of taxes, which would be incovnenient in other arguments they want to make.
It all folds into the narrative that says our current situation is all Obama's fault, nothing he does has been effective at fixing his own problems, and that he only wants to make things worse by charging ahead with his agenda and blaming everyone around him for the reasons why it isn't working.
Elsewhere, the prefix cis- does not carry value judgement with it. Those who complain about being called cis will now be referred to as grues. Seriously - if you're going to complain about being linguistically marked, then maybe you should think about how you go about linguistically marking everyone else, and all te assumptions you make that come with doing so?
Last for tonight, a bit of an oddity. The one candidate who hasn't said that s/he was inspired by G-d to run for President...is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party. Perhaps bona fides on ultra-right-wing social conservatism isn't actually helpful to getting you elected?
Ah, and one other thing - a Florida representative accused the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus of being members of the Communist Party, and now wants to raise campaign funds on that issue. The Communist Party of the USA, when asked for comment, flatly denied the CPC were affiliated with them. (For good reason. Progressive by this Congress's standards is nowehere near the most basic tenets of Communism.)
Second,
crowgirl113 offers up a forum to state one's needs, or to help someone else with their needs.Moving from hero to hero, an alternative framing of the Triple role, based on the main characters of a Cashore trilogy - Katsa, Fire, Bitterblue, Warrior, Healer, Queen.
And speaking of the feminine...by the way, that may have been your last piece of good news for the entry... why, again, aren't there riots in the streets about the way that Republicans are attempting to revert any and all progress made to make it so that women could approach equal footing with men. Is it perhaps because some people believe the premise that the liberal attitude toward sex and sexuality has been more damaging to women, by allowing men to father children and abandon them, while failing to acknowledge (or glossing right over) the fact staring them in the face that lower-income women have less access to things like birth control and contraception and that less educated people have a harder time finding jobs that can actually pay enough to have and raise a family? Well, when they try to make that argument to the younger generation, they fail. Marriage as societal cure-all doesn't fly as a convincing argument, not without good evidence to back it up, and even then, there are a lot of young people who think there are other reasons.
Ah, and Arizona now counts the beginning of a pregnancy as the last day of a menstrual period before getting pregnant. Which means that Arizona now might consider you to have been pregnant for quite some time before there was even conception. Arizona also insists that people geting abortions because the baby won't survive due to unfortunate defects get counseling, that a medication abortion be performed by a doctor who has medical privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the spot where the abortion will be happening, rather than, say, at home, and that an ultrasound is required a day before the abortion...and minors need parental permissions. Both of those wree already in place, just getting reaffirmed.
Out in the world today - North Korea launched their rocket...which failed near the end of the first stage and broke apart, scattering its pieces into the ocean. Which has columnists suggesting that this will make the North Koreans less likely to come to talks about anything because of the loss of faace.
Domestically, Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign, making Willard "Mitt" Romney the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party for 2012. Which is probably the best result for Republicans that they can get, in terms of candidates, as Mr. Romney has always been the one closest to President Obama in the opinion polls. With the addition of dark-money groups going for him, Mr. Romney can mount a strong campaign. Assuming, that is, he doesn't end up fracturing the party and having some of the Republican supporters sitting out this session.
George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin and claimed it was self-defense, has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The arrest of Mr. Zimmerman has conservatives clamoring that Mr. Zimmerman is the victim of racism from the black Attorney General at the direction of the black President who both listen to a discredited black radical, Reverend Sharpton. The case will hopefully be enlightening as to how far the protections involved in laws about "standing your ground" go, and what kind of evidence one would need to successfully argue that the danger was a threat that required the use of deadly force.
UC Davis commissioned an independent investigation into the Occupy attack by police, involving very strong pepper spray and lots of police abuse, and the report is in. [PDF at link]. The report is significantly worse than the media coverage set it out to be - lots of people claiming they made it clear things weren't supposed to go that way, but they did anyway. The police ignored their own procedures, used equipment that was illegal for them to own and use for the situation, and also were not deliberately clear about how they wanted things to go down...plus an officer that claims the orders they received were illegal or un-do-able, and decided to just go forward with their own judgment anyway, instead of refusing the order and demanding a better one. Ugh.
Last out, a case study on how some churches pervert the message in the Christian Foundational Writings to build authoritarian structures from which a member cannot leave, cannot be restored to grace but on the whims of the church's leader, and that will dog the member if they choose to leave the church rather than be forced through the whimsical discipline process.
In technology, iris scanners, passport control systems, and other biometric identity-tracking devices are making it harder for spies to do their work, because you start flagging systems when the names don't match and the biometrics do.
In opinions, Messrs. Gaines and Rivers take a poll indicating most people don't want high taxes on gambling winnings, like lotteries, as an indicator that most people don't want taxes on high incomes at all. In doing so, they ignore what appears to be the logical conclusion - most people think that getting rich by luck is something to keep most of, perhaps because we can imagine that happening to us. Being rich by design, by profession, or by business usually engenders the feeling that those people can afford to pay a little more in taxes, because they consistently are making more instead of having a one-time payment. There's probably an experiment one could run to confirm this thought process.
Messers. Foster and Dubay consider the resurrection of the discussion about the "Buffet Rule" to be a distraction from the real issues of how much the President&apos policies don't work, won't work, and haven't worked. Ms. Miller echoes this issue, claiming that increased tax rates won't help, and that the rich already pay sooo much of taxes... but Mr. Thornton is the clearest about this idea - he calls all the related talk class warfare that doesn't have anything to do with fidxing the economy. The other prong of the attack is Mr. Henninger's defense of Paul Ryan's budget as something that's feasible and superior to the President's alternative.
The WSJ prefers to keep their feet on the idea that lower capital gains tax rates translate to more actual revenue, because people who invest prefer to have instruments that have lower tax rates on their profits and dividends. That, at least, is a logical argument. I think it exposes the underlying problem that making money is often oriented toward making the most and hoarding it, rather than making lots of it and being able to turn it back into more investment or social good. The WSJ also exposes the weakness of raising tax rates - if sufficient loopholes are left in the tax code, then enterprising accountants will ensure that the effective tax rate stays as low as possible through the exploitation of those loopholes. They then go on to argue that the rates shouldn't be raised because the loopholes will make it moot, rather than arguing that if the government really wanted more revenues, they should work on closing out the loopholes and rates that make it possible for the rich to shift their wealth in such a way as to pay as little tax as possible. So, instead, we'll have Mr. Benen do that, saying that enacting the Buffet Rule would be closing a loophole, and that the specifics put forward by the President are far better than relying on magic maths as presented by Mr. Ryan's budget.
And Heritage says states should not be able to collect sales taxes from on-line retailers that have no presence in their state. They paint state governments as greedily seeking new sources of revenue from everyone, but it might be a stronger argument for them to say that the people who have the least to spend in income are the ones that would be hardest hit by having to pay sales taxes on everything. Of course, in doing so, they would be admitting that poor people do, in fact, pay lots of taxes, which would be incovnenient in other arguments they want to make.
It all folds into the narrative that says our current situation is all Obama's fault, nothing he does has been effective at fixing his own problems, and that he only wants to make things worse by charging ahead with his agenda and blaming everyone around him for the reasons why it isn't working.
Elsewhere, the prefix cis- does not carry value judgement with it. Those who complain about being called cis will now be referred to as grues. Seriously - if you're going to complain about being linguistically marked, then maybe you should think about how you go about linguistically marking everyone else, and all te assumptions you make that come with doing so?
Last for tonight, a bit of an oddity. The one candidate who hasn't said that s/he was inspired by G-d to run for President...is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party. Perhaps bona fides on ultra-right-wing social conservatism isn't actually helpful to getting you elected?
Ah, and one other thing - a Florida representative accused the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus of being members of the Communist Party, and now wants to raise campaign funds on that issue. The Communist Party of the USA, when asked for comment, flatly denied the CPC were affiliated with them. (For good reason. Progressive by this Congress's standards is nowehere near the most basic tenets of Communism.)
