All this can be yours, if the price is right - 14 August 2008

[silveradept]

The current administrator starts demanding that the Russian administrators remove their troop presence from Georgia, as well as sending aid to the country. It's almost like someone really wants to go fighting... again. In response, the Russians tell the world to get over the idea of returning Georgia to what it once was. Some in the media are worried that Russia's energy reserves will play a key role if a bigger conflict is renewed, thinking that if Russia turns off the taps, then Europe finds itself in a really bad place, and as such, threats to do that will keep Europe and the U.S. away from Russia.

It's not just the U.S. that looks to be spoiling for a fight. Israel has the dukes up, waiting for Iran to misstep or for diplomacy to fail to provide a non-nuclear Iran.

Syria and Lebanon establish official diplomatic ties and exchange ambassadors, a move seen as positive for both countries.

Iran's new interior minister is alleged to be faking his credentials, after trying to pass off a poor document as a genuine doctor of laws degree from Oxford University. The University itself says it issued no such degree to the minister.

Domestically, apparently all Caucasian-descent people should take note - "white" people will be a minority near the middle of this century, according to the Census. We're just great with immigration, legal and illegal, and all of those durn minority people are making more babies than the whites. I'm sure we should react to this with horror. Maybe we'll find this in a McCain ad soon?

What might start appearing in Obama ads are counter hits to the idea that Senator McCain speaks for the military, based on donations favoring Senator Obama, even if in general, the military favors Republicans. A smaller sampling interviewed suggested that Senator McCain's Iraq policies may be the reason why he's unpopular with the troops.

In opinions, The Georgia-Russia conflict engineered as a campaign issue? Well, considering a McCain chief adviser has been a lobbyist for Georgia for years, and may very well have made assurances that the U.S. would hit back when Russia counterstruck, and this makes for an easy redemonization of an enemy that the demographic that the Senator is shooting for, with the way his advertisements are running... well, maaaaybe. Mr. Olbermann also wondered whether this was a set-up job, or whether Senator McCain's attitude toward the conflict belies having prepared for this incident and is trying to capture votes with it, as well as set Russia up to be the bogeyman people remember it was.

Betsy McCaughey says that all hospitals should always be infection-free, and that the people should settle for nothing less, through the adoption of strict infection-preventing guidelines. Can we add a few to that? Like "Doctors and medical staff must be permitted to sleep for 9 hours off-shift" so that there's no haze or forgetting or worry that the doctor may not be up to full mental or physical capacity?

Last out of this, Rebecca MacKinnon shows off subtler and better Chinese censorship, designed to hide itself and not be noticed. United States government and others who are looking to control communications in this country are probably taking notes on how well China can control information and still appear to have an open press.

Well, it's not like Mr. McCain is above dirty tricks for votes. Other prominent conservative African-Americans have yet to say anything, although the General hopes that will change soon.

On the other side of life, Thomas Sowell thinks any Democrat claiming to be against special interests is deluding themselves, as they're beholden to unions, both worker and teacher, and the environmental mob (the "green zealots").

Walter E. Williams believes that all the funding in the world can't make for a good school environment, and uses as his examples predominantly African-American schools that produce excellent students, supposedly despite bad resources, legacies of racism, and other things that should explain why their school is supposed to be failing.

The Wall Street Journal thinks it has finally found the perfect analogue to what would have happened had America decided not to "surge" and thus claim "victory" in Iraq - the British, who had made deals for peace and were unable to help, because of technology issues, apparently, when the Americans came to sack Sadr City. The WSJ thinks that we'd all be criticizing the current administrator for letting the American military get defeated, as the British population is apparently doing to Mr. Brown.

Science and tech give us nanotech water purification, another improved solar cell design, faster RAM designs for quicker access times, cooked food as a possible reason for intelligence increases and bigger brain capacity in evolution, the 95th anniversary of the invention of the alloy known as stainless steel, and trying to create computer-assisted telepathy, perhaps for battlefield use at first, but likely coming back down into medical fields to assist with prosthetics.

Last for tonight, Star Wars characters in modern urban settings, blended perfectly as to look quite natural. Good stuff. Just don't go looking for reviews of the Clone Wars movie - because they said the movie sucked, Lucasfilm had them embargoed. On the tail end, advice for aspiring writers on how to avoid aliens that feed on new writers and suck their blood and money dry.

Comments

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Where I live (Las Cruces, NM) something like 55% of the population is Hispanic, I don't know about the rest of the state.

But you're absolutely correct, in a global-view whites are definitely the minority, it's only attitude and arrogance that sees their non-majority aspect as a problem.