Two-by-two - 26-27 February 2009
Feb. 28th, 2009 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptHeh. Funny how work and a social life interfere with your blogging, isn't it?
Here up top, sea otter boogers! Okay, so not really that, but they apparently look like them but taste better. Kind of like HBO programming suddenly getting good by trusting the writers, novel concept that.
Around the world, a concept in taking absurdities to logical conclusions that would link the disparate Palestinian territories together through the use of building bridges and bypasses over the non-Palestinian territories. Ugly skyscape, but also showing how trying to partition land to keep people away from each other isn't always a successful or wise idea.
Concerns arise about the ability of the Iraqi security forces to keep themselves equipped after the Americans leave.
Iran and Russia run a test of the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, in anticipation of full functionality. Bets on whether it gets cratered before it can be completed?
The Serbian president during the ethnic cleansing of Albanians from Kosovo has been found innocent at the Hague, with the decision coming down that he did not a role. Five others were convicted for their parts in the campaign.
Here at home, see the consequences of the War on (Some) Drugs, where during a raid, police shot a 92 year-old woman, then planted evidence and falsified their reports to try and justify themselves, as well as meet quotas and continue in a broken system, always ensuring their methods seem legal by the "evidence" they find and the rewriting of reports to make it look legitimate. All that over marijuana that wasn't even there.
The new CIA director holds some continuity with the last administration's policies, reports the WSJ, with an ear out for some sort of knee-jerk howls that would get the liberal wing to turn on its own candidate because he was keeping anything from the last eight years. To counter this, as expected, the Obama administration is moving to resind the previous administrator's "conscience rule" for health care providers, so that someone can no longer refuse to give someone medical services because they object personally to them.
The administration is also deleting a blanket ban on news coverage of war dead in their coffins, replacing it with "If the families say it's okay to display, then you can".
The SCOTUS rules that, because it would have to go in all or none were it forced to handle all applicants equally, that governments can pick and choose which monuments and messages to have on public property, regardless of the religiosity of the message - meaning that they can choose to have a monument to the Ten Commandments in the public park, but then refuse to display, say, The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. They are still supposedly subject to the Establishment Clause, at least. I'd say that the presence of only one religious monument in the park could be interpreted as establishment, but that will be a different case, I'm guessing.
With the threat of someone actually overseeing them, Wall Street cowered in fear and the indexes dropped. And then came the rumors that if someone tried economic terrorism, we wouldn't be able to recover. And now, a budget of $3.6 trillion dollars appaears, with big deficits now, but lesser in the future. Hope there's a way of getting health care affordable again in there. People are skipping medical visits and regualr checkups because of the expense.
And now that we have more numbers and material, here come the opinions. William Pesek says we will be very lucky if we mimic Japan in the 1990s, because, all told, they did really well. Senator Inhofe says that the taxes on climate emissions will be gigantic, with The WSJ in support, with the WSJ mentioning that this is supposedly a tax increase for everyone, because the costs of carbon emission auctions will be passed onto the consumer. That is not a tax on the consumer, even if they do end up paying more because companies always pass everything but profit onto the consumer. Jeanne Cummings says "class warfare" in the Robin Hood sense, The WSJ pans the expanded budget, also believing it a way of putting government in control and keeping it there with high expenditures on everything, and declares that there's no way that the President can keep a promise about only taxing a small segment of the populace more to pay for everything, which means we're all getting taxed at some point, and likely hard. Which, of course, as Mr. Elder tells us yet again, is totally contrary to the way to make prosperity by cutting taxes everywhere to everyone, businesses and the rich especially. Meaning It's going to be a failure, at least according to Dick Morris and Eileen McGann.
That said, they do have a point that voting oneselves extra money after the passage of the stimulus bill is a bit on the odd side, and proabbly won't resonate well. What's in this omnibus that didn't make it into the stimulus?
Mr. Thomas pens a column on contradictions from the President, explicitly stating that the Democratic President's job is to behave more Republican than Republicans, who are instead like Democrats. Mr. Thomas, Terra calling - Republicanism is not inherently superior, despite the gigantic amount of effort that you're putting into saying that Republicans since Reagan haven't been true to their principles, and thus were never really Republicans. Also, Mr. Henninger - why are you so afraid that the President is doing what he said he would do?
Out of all of that, Mr. Boehner, the House Minority Leader, claims that Nancy Pelosi is getting in the way of him working with Barack Obama. continuing the "Blame Nancy" strategem, but Mr. Boehner surely realizes that Barack Obama is not the person he wants to work with, unless he truly believes that by going over Pelosi's head, he'll manage to get what he wants when... oh, wait, the President still can't introduce legislation, which means Ms. Pelosi still gets her whacks at it. Mr. Boehner needs to work with Ms. Pelosi, not Mr. Obama. Ms. Strassel is at least more honest by calling the President a liar, as is Mr. Turd Blossom, who accusses the President of using strawmen arguments.
Ms. Samuelson and Ms. Stout tell us that cutting executive compensation isn't enough - we need to overhaul the system totally and not reward highly risky behavior that generates house-of-cards situations. Y'know, real reform.
Mr. Will is incredulous that men, indeed, hug each other. Never one to miss an opportunity, The General suggests that we return to a Biblical practice of men holding other men's testicles in hand as they swear an oath to each other. I think Mr. Will will pass there, but he's totally okay with believing that soon, we'll all become puritannical about our sexual lives like we obsessively try to fine-tune our diet and eating now, so that we become more discriminating in our tastes instead of the "all-you-can-get" orgy that er're indulging in now, to our detriment.
The WSJ is certain that school choice vouchers in D.C. will die, because funding for their program has to be reapproved by Congress and the cCity council in 2010. Because Democrats and D.C. are both the marionettes of teacher's unions, who hate school choice, the program is dead, at least by the logic there. We'll see what happens. Speaking of D.C., Mr. Champan insists that consitutional amendment is still the only way to give the residents a voice in the Congress.
On the last, ddjango feels that the Myth of Obama is already evaporating, and that ugly reality will soon set in - for all the promises of change, there will be no such thing, not in the places where it would need to be to achieve real progress. Thus, we need more futurists. If you prefer that message delivered in such a way as to call the Speaker of the House mentally retarded, decry the entirety of the public schooling system, assume that any money spent on stimulus dollars will be used to create more positions at the Department of Education, and denigrate every teacher in the public school system as someone who is slavishly beholden to their union and wants to do everything with their life except teach (while being jealous that they supposedly "get off at 2" every day), then look no further than Ms. Ann Coulter.
In tech and science, a climate observatory rocket failed to make it into orbit, with an earthlike finder on the way next, as a study claims to debunk the idea that scientists were concerned about global cooling in the 1970s, which could mean that finding ways to ride out a warming catastrophe event becomes more important. Additionally, robots tending, detecting cracks in, and tending wind farm turbines, or possibly helping to construct an outpost on Luna, new ways of getting robots to recognize that they've been somewhere before, even if the picture they have now has changed from the original, some new stuff from Microsoft, and language modeled as quantum entanglements instead of discrete entities that spread-activate, our brains reacting to immorality with disgust, science finding that we might be able to compensate for missing brain chemicals, and the usual tiny stuff news, like growing nanotube forests, aiming for sequencing an entire genome for $100, using nanoscale origami to build electronic structures, movies on mobile devices as the next Wave of the Future, memristor/transistor reprogrammable devices as another Wave, and new ideas on how to use gigapixel pictures.
Last for tonight, It doesn't matter where you reduce your calories, be it carbs, fats, protiens, whatever. Losing weight is about calorie reduction.
Here up top, sea otter boogers! Okay, so not really that, but they apparently look like them but taste better. Kind of like HBO programming suddenly getting good by trusting the writers, novel concept that.
Around the world, a concept in taking absurdities to logical conclusions that would link the disparate Palestinian territories together through the use of building bridges and bypasses over the non-Palestinian territories. Ugly skyscape, but also showing how trying to partition land to keep people away from each other isn't always a successful or wise idea.
Concerns arise about the ability of the Iraqi security forces to keep themselves equipped after the Americans leave.
Iran and Russia run a test of the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, in anticipation of full functionality. Bets on whether it gets cratered before it can be completed?
The Serbian president during the ethnic cleansing of Albanians from Kosovo has been found innocent at the Hague, with the decision coming down that he did not a role. Five others were convicted for their parts in the campaign.
Here at home, see the consequences of the War on (Some) Drugs, where during a raid, police shot a 92 year-old woman, then planted evidence and falsified their reports to try and justify themselves, as well as meet quotas and continue in a broken system, always ensuring their methods seem legal by the "evidence" they find and the rewriting of reports to make it look legitimate. All that over marijuana that wasn't even there.
The new CIA director holds some continuity with the last administration's policies, reports the WSJ, with an ear out for some sort of knee-jerk howls that would get the liberal wing to turn on its own candidate because he was keeping anything from the last eight years. To counter this, as expected, the Obama administration is moving to resind the previous administrator's "conscience rule" for health care providers, so that someone can no longer refuse to give someone medical services because they object personally to them.
The administration is also deleting a blanket ban on news coverage of war dead in their coffins, replacing it with "If the families say it's okay to display, then you can".
The SCOTUS rules that, because it would have to go in all or none were it forced to handle all applicants equally, that governments can pick and choose which monuments and messages to have on public property, regardless of the religiosity of the message - meaning that they can choose to have a monument to the Ten Commandments in the public park, but then refuse to display, say, The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. They are still supposedly subject to the Establishment Clause, at least. I'd say that the presence of only one religious monument in the park could be interpreted as establishment, but that will be a different case, I'm guessing.
With the threat of someone actually overseeing them, Wall Street cowered in fear and the indexes dropped. And then came the rumors that if someone tried economic terrorism, we wouldn't be able to recover. And now, a budget of $3.6 trillion dollars appaears, with big deficits now, but lesser in the future. Hope there's a way of getting health care affordable again in there. People are skipping medical visits and regualr checkups because of the expense.
And now that we have more numbers and material, here come the opinions. William Pesek says we will be very lucky if we mimic Japan in the 1990s, because, all told, they did really well. Senator Inhofe says that the taxes on climate emissions will be gigantic, with The WSJ in support, with the WSJ mentioning that this is supposedly a tax increase for everyone, because the costs of carbon emission auctions will be passed onto the consumer. That is not a tax on the consumer, even if they do end up paying more because companies always pass everything but profit onto the consumer. Jeanne Cummings says "class warfare" in the Robin Hood sense, The WSJ pans the expanded budget, also believing it a way of putting government in control and keeping it there with high expenditures on everything, and declares that there's no way that the President can keep a promise about only taxing a small segment of the populace more to pay for everything, which means we're all getting taxed at some point, and likely hard. Which, of course, as Mr. Elder tells us yet again, is totally contrary to the way to make prosperity by cutting taxes everywhere to everyone, businesses and the rich especially. Meaning It's going to be a failure, at least according to Dick Morris and Eileen McGann.
That said, they do have a point that voting oneselves extra money after the passage of the stimulus bill is a bit on the odd side, and proabbly won't resonate well. What's in this omnibus that didn't make it into the stimulus?
Mr. Thomas pens a column on contradictions from the President, explicitly stating that the Democratic President's job is to behave more Republican than Republicans, who are instead like Democrats. Mr. Thomas, Terra calling - Republicanism is not inherently superior, despite the gigantic amount of effort that you're putting into saying that Republicans since Reagan haven't been true to their principles, and thus were never really Republicans. Also, Mr. Henninger - why are you so afraid that the President is doing what he said he would do?
Out of all of that, Mr. Boehner, the House Minority Leader, claims that Nancy Pelosi is getting in the way of him working with Barack Obama. continuing the "Blame Nancy" strategem, but Mr. Boehner surely realizes that Barack Obama is not the person he wants to work with, unless he truly believes that by going over Pelosi's head, he'll manage to get what he wants when... oh, wait, the President still can't introduce legislation, which means Ms. Pelosi still gets her whacks at it. Mr. Boehner needs to work with Ms. Pelosi, not Mr. Obama. Ms. Strassel is at least more honest by calling the President a liar, as is Mr. Turd Blossom, who accusses the President of using strawmen arguments.
Ms. Samuelson and Ms. Stout tell us that cutting executive compensation isn't enough - we need to overhaul the system totally and not reward highly risky behavior that generates house-of-cards situations. Y'know, real reform.
Mr. Will is incredulous that men, indeed, hug each other. Never one to miss an opportunity, The General suggests that we return to a Biblical practice of men holding other men's testicles in hand as they swear an oath to each other. I think Mr. Will will pass there, but he's totally okay with believing that soon, we'll all become puritannical about our sexual lives like we obsessively try to fine-tune our diet and eating now, so that we become more discriminating in our tastes instead of the "all-you-can-get" orgy that er're indulging in now, to our detriment.
The WSJ is certain that school choice vouchers in D.C. will die, because funding for their program has to be reapproved by Congress and the cCity council in 2010. Because Democrats and D.C. are both the marionettes of teacher's unions, who hate school choice, the program is dead, at least by the logic there. We'll see what happens. Speaking of D.C., Mr. Champan insists that consitutional amendment is still the only way to give the residents a voice in the Congress.
On the last, ddjango feels that the Myth of Obama is already evaporating, and that ugly reality will soon set in - for all the promises of change, there will be no such thing, not in the places where it would need to be to achieve real progress. Thus, we need more futurists. If you prefer that message delivered in such a way as to call the Speaker of the House mentally retarded, decry the entirety of the public schooling system, assume that any money spent on stimulus dollars will be used to create more positions at the Department of Education, and denigrate every teacher in the public school system as someone who is slavishly beholden to their union and wants to do everything with their life except teach (while being jealous that they supposedly "get off at 2" every day), then look no further than Ms. Ann Coulter.
In tech and science, a climate observatory rocket failed to make it into orbit, with an earthlike finder on the way next, as a study claims to debunk the idea that scientists were concerned about global cooling in the 1970s, which could mean that finding ways to ride out a warming catastrophe event becomes more important. Additionally, robots tending, detecting cracks in, and tending wind farm turbines, or possibly helping to construct an outpost on Luna, new ways of getting robots to recognize that they've been somewhere before, even if the picture they have now has changed from the original, some new stuff from Microsoft, and language modeled as quantum entanglements instead of discrete entities that spread-activate, our brains reacting to immorality with disgust, science finding that we might be able to compensate for missing brain chemicals, and the usual tiny stuff news, like growing nanotube forests, aiming for sequencing an entire genome for $100, using nanoscale origami to build electronic structures, movies on mobile devices as the next Wave of the Future, memristor/transistor reprogrammable devices as another Wave, and new ideas on how to use gigapixel pictures.
Last for tonight, It doesn't matter where you reduce your calories, be it carbs, fats, protiens, whatever. Losing weight is about calorie reduction.
