silveradept | Early updates for all

Doing this early because I’m going to have to pack up the computer tonight, so that in the morning, we get up, have food, and drive. So a daily dose of my insanity, direct to you through the wonders of the Intarwebs.

bradhicks talks about issues local to him as well as more national ones, and today he talks about how much damage the death of a good cop can do, in all the lives that he could have turned around, people he could have helped, and disasters that might have been averted. He also makes mention of how much the death of that cop can be used to promote an agenda that would cause even more harm at the hands of the police to the people on that good cop’s beat. Always seems like the officers who can do the most good are the ones who end up dying before they can accomplish all of it.

AmericaBlog tells us much of what we want to know about those who fill out polls at WorldNetDaily - they're quite in favor of nuking Muslim holy sites. Even better, it’s apparently because it’s “the only language these religion-driven fanatics understand”, according to the clear majority of responses. I’m just waiting for the realization of how well that applies to them, too. Any time now, really, it’ll happen.

A rather interesting sequence of events brought on by the current climate. Diabetics have hospitalizing incidents because officials seize insulin needles, seven-year-old children who have the same name as someone on a trigger list have their flights canceled and are subjected to scrutiny multiple times. Going just by name is rather stupid. I want to see what happens when a John Smith gets on the no-fly list. And, here in the United States, the true colors are coming out - Democrats are saying troop surges are working, while still saying that they should come home. So when push comes to shove, which line will they take - that the surge is working, or that the troops need to come home? This looks like a rather nakedly political move to me. Come election time, there may be some hard questions asked about what to do in Iraq if one of the at least nominally anti-war candidates gets into the office.

I would like to see what Thomas Sowell believes is the real cause of progress when he claims that the American liberal establishment is only concerned with using the poor as weapons, rather than trying to help them in their plight. It may be true, that as people pass out of poverty into well-being that they lose political focus, but it might be for the justifiable reason that there are still plenty of people poor and in need of assistance. But I think Sowell wants to have you believe that liberals want to keep an underclass that they can then exploit for political purposes. Which, if I recall rightly, would be one of the points that Marx fellow he mentions applies to everyone in the capitalist class, not just one’s opponents. The current system doesn’t always do things to help people, like assessing back taxes on a debt cancelled through foreclosure, which would probably not help anyone who was in the situation of being unable to make payments.

Our celebrity news will make pet lovers feel a little better - Michael Vick will accept a plea bargain regarding charges related to a dogfighting ring and plead guilty. Punishment to follow, which may include jail, fines, and/or his exclusion from the professional sports league he is currently a part of.

In technology news, a Microsoft patch that caused many Windows machines to reboot caused an unintentional DoS on Skype. There was also a bug that kept the system down for some time afterward, but the tendency of computers to be set at the defaults, which is “reboot immediately after installing, kthx” for some reason, caused a service outage. And might have made a lot of people curse after losing work they had. Technology having good results, though, comes from The Happiness Project, where Gretchen realizes that listening to the music you like will make you happy, regardless of whether it shows off any sort of “taste” or “sophistication” in your musical choices. Listen to what makes you happy. Do what makes you happy. Even if it is snickering about old Batman comics discussing mistakes, or "boners".

In my case, although the happiness value is somewhat disputed, I must do my packing thing. From here on out, you’ll probably only be serenaded by the sound of my rather non-radiogenic voice. For that, I apologize, but it’s the only way anyone’s getting updates, most likely, for the next few days.