Charge! (And Owe!) - 10 July 2008
Jul. 10th, 2008 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptWork today was quite the interesting sequence - I did not spend one minute at the desk of my regularly assigned branch for the entirety of my paid time today. I think that’s the first time that’s happened on a day when I didn’t have a full-day meeting (I had a half-day meeting, instead...).
Anyway, let’s go for the throat right from the start - we know that Mr. W. Bush has trouble with appearing to be an intelligent and educated man, one worthy of respect. He did not help to dispel that image at the G8 summit today, using some Spanish to attempt to flag down the Italian prime minister, after having apologized for publishing a completely factual but unflattering biography of him as a politician. Mr. Bush then took his leave of the summit by saying "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter" and adding a "we're #1"-style fist-pump on the end.
Iran didn’t fare much better today. After missile launch pictures came under suspicion of a bad Photoshop job, which was later confirmed to be a bad Photoshop job, even though the fact that missiles and potentially more missiles were launched isn’t in doubt. The United States Secretary of Defense seized the opportunity to argue for the relevancy and need for the polish/Czech missile shield. The Wall Street Journal's opinion page also wants you to believe Iran is a big threat now, and that the United States needs interception sites all over the world.
Images of China's anti-terror drills and police parades in anticipation of the Olympic Games. In other words, there’s a lot of police presence there, and they’re probably not going to be shy about using it.
In Iraq, serious civil works projects are underway in Sadr City to keep the friendliness of the residents high, displaying what might be competence in the “hearts and minds” part of unifying the country under the central government.
I have to highlight the following opinion in the Wall Street Journal, because I see it as the vanguard of the new conservative position. The Wall Street Journal encourages a status of forces agreement, but suggests now that withdrawal of troops from Iraq is a positive thing, assuming that some troops stay and the timetable is agreed to by both sides. See the spin? Where it used to be “Troops in, possibly forever”, became “Watch the surge, it’s going to work” to “Surge successful, see? We need to stay to make sure, of course.” Now that the Iraqi government and people have said “You’re leaving, either by a timetable that we set or all at once.”, the rhetoric has changed to “We have confidence that the Iraqi people can maintain security, now that our successful surge has quelled the violence. We’ll have to leave behind some amount of forces, of course, just to be sure, but we can start withdrawing troops soon.” A nifty undercut of the opposition’s long-held position that American troops have needed to come out of Iraq, instead of pouring more in. It will soon be a popular conservative position to establish timetables for withdrawal and bring the troops home, under the rhetoric of “victory”, despite “Mission Accomplished” having happened more than five years ago. Iraq will have become a sign of America’s greatness and ability to both conquer and rebuild, while swiftly and violently burying the shifting justifications, half-truths and “intelligence failures” that brought about the conflict in the first place. Poisonous fruit of that vine.
If the withdrawal happens and things don’t fall apart, conservatives will claim it a victory of the current administration’s policies and the surge strategy. If it fails, liberals will be blamed for forcing a timetable and an early exit, especially if the wheels come off during a President Obama’s term. It’s a no-lose situation for the spin machine. But I’m marking this as the point where, out of necessity and the Iraqi people not budging, the idea of drawing down troops on a fixed schedule becomes an acceptable idea for conservatives to talk about.
In domestic matters, this is why you get your vaccines, godsdammit: A measles outbreak has struck 127 people over 15 states, most of whom were not vaccinated, and were thus susceptible to the disease when travelers who were infected overseas returned. While nobody has died yet on this outbreak, we wouldn’t have to worry about it if everyone were immunized against the disease.
Senator Obama takes whacks from all sides of the spectrum on his recent interview regarding late-term abortions, with the center position being a very dangerous one, not being pro-choice enough for many liberals, and not anti-choice enough for any religious conservatives he would want to court. Furthermore, on a hot microphone, but off the air, the Reverend Jesse Jackson expresses unflattering opinions of Senator Obama. The minister apologized, almost as soon as he realized what he has done, but that didn’t really stop Fox from parading the matter in front of everyone, including using Bill’O as the first person to air it. They did at least wait three days to air it, but Bill’O also implied that there was much worse stuff hidden away that didn’t get shown because they weren’t out to embarrass the reverend or make him look bad. If that really were the case, the sound bite would be buried as something said off-the-record. But faced with such a promising morsel, they couldn’t turn it down.
On the Republican side, a potential candidate for McCain's veep gets the twice-over by the General, with some possibility that Governor Crist may not be a heterosexual, despite a convenient tape showing him making out with a woman. (“I’m not gay, honest? See? Security cameras caught me making out with my girlfriend!”) In the running for a Republican office, though, all candidates must be heterosexual family-values types, lest they further fracture the already weak coalition. Would be interesting to see it happen, though - an outed homosexual in a Republican vice-president spot, if Governor Crist really is, and was willing to get both nomination and come out of the closet. I can imagine the fun from that.
In the opinion columns, Andrew Bolt makes fun of someone suffering from a serious delusion that his drinking water would kill millions by exhausting the water supply by stating that everyone who believes in anthropogenic climate change, or that small countries such as Australia can make a dent on CO2 emissions, is suffering similar delusions, including government officials.
To get the country off dependence of foreign oil, T. Boone Pickens, CEO of BP Capital, says that we'll start with wind. The wind power will replace the natural gas going into power plants, which will then displace a significant amount of our oil needs, and buy us enough time to get the other alternative energy technologies in place and generating electricity. Ten years maximum, he says. I like the plan. I’d like to see it done. Can we get the investment we need to start generating serious energy from renewable resources? Walter E. Williams calls Congress OPEC's staunchest ally, in calling for more drilling, believing that even if it takes time to extract, oil prices will fall from the threat of domestic supplies.
The Wall Street Journal sees an impending collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, especially if the taxpayer-backed corporations continue to be used as a place for high-risk and losing mortgage investments to be dumped from other corporations.The crash has to hit rock bottom somewhere, and if it ends up being the taxpayer who gets the short end of the stick, it will be politics as usual. Just be sure that when some company posts a record profit from having unloaded all their bad investments, that the government says, “We’ll take that, thank you for paying us back for the bad loans you unloaded on us. Next time, make better decisions.”
Speaking of spending, Michael Leavitt, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, sees competitive bidding on durable medical equipment as a litmus test for Congress on entitlement spending. Should the Congress be able to put DME services out to bid, he feels they might have the stones to make more difficult decisions about other entitlements.
In candidate opinions, Turd Blossom says Senator Obama has been copying the Bush playbook and using Nixon tactics, although he claims the Senator doesn’t have the machine the GOP does, and we all saw what happened to Nixon, right? Plus, Obama’s just the biggest flip-flopper ever, isn’t he? Ah, Karl, remember that you’re a discredited advisor to what will likely go down in history as one of the sorriest administrations in recent, and possibly long-term, history. The WSJ probably gives you space because Rupert likes you and thinks you’re doing a heckuva job. Plus, your attempt to take credit for Senator Obama’s playbook is misguided. If he’s emulating anybody, really, it’s Ron Paul’s campaign. Senator Obama noticed how well it did in fundraising and thought it would be a good idea.
Science and technology leads with robots thrashing humans at air hockey. Will there be no sport that humans can play better than robots and computers, given enough time and computing power?
A new Microsoft update may bork your Internet completely, but it seems to affect ZoneAlarm users most consistently.
The Continuum of Cute. Look at how other people ranked 100 animal pictures, or make your own ranking.
Last for tonight, Shipping Justice: The Guantanamo Bay cell on tour. Using a scaled replica of the isolation cell that many Guantanamo Bay detainees spend most of their days in, a countrywide tour aims to increase the people’s knowledge of what goes on and to get them to put pressure on the government to shut down overseas dungeons, and to realize just how potentially arbitrary jailing and “justice” really is. Add the torture and abuse on top of that, and it’s a real fun place out there, isn’t it?
Anyway, let’s go for the throat right from the start - we know that Mr. W. Bush has trouble with appearing to be an intelligent and educated man, one worthy of respect. He did not help to dispel that image at the G8 summit today, using some Spanish to attempt to flag down the Italian prime minister, after having apologized for publishing a completely factual but unflattering biography of him as a politician. Mr. Bush then took his leave of the summit by saying "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter" and adding a "we're #1"-style fist-pump on the end.
Iran didn’t fare much better today. After missile launch pictures came under suspicion of a bad Photoshop job, which was later confirmed to be a bad Photoshop job, even though the fact that missiles and potentially more missiles were launched isn’t in doubt. The United States Secretary of Defense seized the opportunity to argue for the relevancy and need for the polish/Czech missile shield. The Wall Street Journal's opinion page also wants you to believe Iran is a big threat now, and that the United States needs interception sites all over the world.
Images of China's anti-terror drills and police parades in anticipation of the Olympic Games. In other words, there’s a lot of police presence there, and they’re probably not going to be shy about using it.
In Iraq, serious civil works projects are underway in Sadr City to keep the friendliness of the residents high, displaying what might be competence in the “hearts and minds” part of unifying the country under the central government.
I have to highlight the following opinion in the Wall Street Journal, because I see it as the vanguard of the new conservative position. The Wall Street Journal encourages a status of forces agreement, but suggests now that withdrawal of troops from Iraq is a positive thing, assuming that some troops stay and the timetable is agreed to by both sides. See the spin? Where it used to be “Troops in, possibly forever”, became “Watch the surge, it’s going to work” to “Surge successful, see? We need to stay to make sure, of course.” Now that the Iraqi government and people have said “You’re leaving, either by a timetable that we set or all at once.”, the rhetoric has changed to “We have confidence that the Iraqi people can maintain security, now that our successful surge has quelled the violence. We’ll have to leave behind some amount of forces, of course, just to be sure, but we can start withdrawing troops soon.” A nifty undercut of the opposition’s long-held position that American troops have needed to come out of Iraq, instead of pouring more in. It will soon be a popular conservative position to establish timetables for withdrawal and bring the troops home, under the rhetoric of “victory”, despite “Mission Accomplished” having happened more than five years ago. Iraq will have become a sign of America’s greatness and ability to both conquer and rebuild, while swiftly and violently burying the shifting justifications, half-truths and “intelligence failures” that brought about the conflict in the first place. Poisonous fruit of that vine.
If the withdrawal happens and things don’t fall apart, conservatives will claim it a victory of the current administration’s policies and the surge strategy. If it fails, liberals will be blamed for forcing a timetable and an early exit, especially if the wheels come off during a President Obama’s term. It’s a no-lose situation for the spin machine. But I’m marking this as the point where, out of necessity and the Iraqi people not budging, the idea of drawing down troops on a fixed schedule becomes an acceptable idea for conservatives to talk about.
In domestic matters, this is why you get your vaccines, godsdammit: A measles outbreak has struck 127 people over 15 states, most of whom were not vaccinated, and were thus susceptible to the disease when travelers who were infected overseas returned. While nobody has died yet on this outbreak, we wouldn’t have to worry about it if everyone were immunized against the disease.
Senator Obama takes whacks from all sides of the spectrum on his recent interview regarding late-term abortions, with the center position being a very dangerous one, not being pro-choice enough for many liberals, and not anti-choice enough for any religious conservatives he would want to court. Furthermore, on a hot microphone, but off the air, the Reverend Jesse Jackson expresses unflattering opinions of Senator Obama. The minister apologized, almost as soon as he realized what he has done, but that didn’t really stop Fox from parading the matter in front of everyone, including using Bill’O as the first person to air it. They did at least wait three days to air it, but Bill’O also implied that there was much worse stuff hidden away that didn’t get shown because they weren’t out to embarrass the reverend or make him look bad. If that really were the case, the sound bite would be buried as something said off-the-record. But faced with such a promising morsel, they couldn’t turn it down.
On the Republican side, a potential candidate for McCain's veep gets the twice-over by the General, with some possibility that Governor Crist may not be a heterosexual, despite a convenient tape showing him making out with a woman. (“I’m not gay, honest? See? Security cameras caught me making out with my girlfriend!”) In the running for a Republican office, though, all candidates must be heterosexual family-values types, lest they further fracture the already weak coalition. Would be interesting to see it happen, though - an outed homosexual in a Republican vice-president spot, if Governor Crist really is, and was willing to get both nomination and come out of the closet. I can imagine the fun from that.
In the opinion columns, Andrew Bolt makes fun of someone suffering from a serious delusion that his drinking water would kill millions by exhausting the water supply by stating that everyone who believes in anthropogenic climate change, or that small countries such as Australia can make a dent on CO2 emissions, is suffering similar delusions, including government officials.
To get the country off dependence of foreign oil, T. Boone Pickens, CEO of BP Capital, says that we'll start with wind. The wind power will replace the natural gas going into power plants, which will then displace a significant amount of our oil needs, and buy us enough time to get the other alternative energy technologies in place and generating electricity. Ten years maximum, he says. I like the plan. I’d like to see it done. Can we get the investment we need to start generating serious energy from renewable resources? Walter E. Williams calls Congress OPEC's staunchest ally, in calling for more drilling, believing that even if it takes time to extract, oil prices will fall from the threat of domestic supplies.
The Wall Street Journal sees an impending collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, especially if the taxpayer-backed corporations continue to be used as a place for high-risk and losing mortgage investments to be dumped from other corporations.The crash has to hit rock bottom somewhere, and if it ends up being the taxpayer who gets the short end of the stick, it will be politics as usual. Just be sure that when some company posts a record profit from having unloaded all their bad investments, that the government says, “We’ll take that, thank you for paying us back for the bad loans you unloaded on us. Next time, make better decisions.”
Speaking of spending, Michael Leavitt, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, sees competitive bidding on durable medical equipment as a litmus test for Congress on entitlement spending. Should the Congress be able to put DME services out to bid, he feels they might have the stones to make more difficult decisions about other entitlements.
In candidate opinions, Turd Blossom says Senator Obama has been copying the Bush playbook and using Nixon tactics, although he claims the Senator doesn’t have the machine the GOP does, and we all saw what happened to Nixon, right? Plus, Obama’s just the biggest flip-flopper ever, isn’t he? Ah, Karl, remember that you’re a discredited advisor to what will likely go down in history as one of the sorriest administrations in recent, and possibly long-term, history. The WSJ probably gives you space because Rupert likes you and thinks you’re doing a heckuva job. Plus, your attempt to take credit for Senator Obama’s playbook is misguided. If he’s emulating anybody, really, it’s Ron Paul’s campaign. Senator Obama noticed how well it did in fundraising and thought it would be a good idea.
Science and technology leads with robots thrashing humans at air hockey. Will there be no sport that humans can play better than robots and computers, given enough time and computing power?
A new Microsoft update may bork your Internet completely, but it seems to affect ZoneAlarm users most consistently.
The Continuum of Cute. Look at how other people ranked 100 animal pictures, or make your own ranking.
Last for tonight, Shipping Justice: The Guantanamo Bay cell on tour. Using a scaled replica of the isolation cell that many Guantanamo Bay detainees spend most of their days in, a countrywide tour aims to increase the people’s knowledge of what goes on and to get them to put pressure on the government to shut down overseas dungeons, and to realize just how potentially arbitrary jailing and “justice” really is. Add the torture and abuse on top of that, and it’s a real fun place out there, isn’t it?
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Date: 2008-07-11 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 02:30 pm (UTC)