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silveradeptBefore we begin, a suggested reading list for the President during his vacation to Martha's Vineyard, courtesy of the Dover Public Library staff.
Also, the xkcd that everyone who's done unofficial (or official) tech support for someone else has saved, claimed, printed, or otherwise made mention of.
Finally, I still want to know how supposedly having 200GB free on my drive turned into having almost no space free in all of my moving around. I guess it really is true - the clutter expands to fit the available space. Time to go pruning, I guess.
The Dead Pool claims Senator Edward Kennedy, the last of the three Kennedy brothers, at 77 years of age. Cause: Cancer. Cue the parade of people, from all walks of life and identifications, taht feel the impact of this loss.
Out in the world today, China admits to having transplanted the organs of those killed by the justice system into recipients, claiming they will try to go away from that system to a voluntary one. Some part of me thinks that using the organs of those killed by the government may be an attempt at restitution, but only if those killed were all legitimate criminals and bad people, which isn't probably true in China.
Afghanistan continues to be an explosive topic, this time targeting a company planning on building infrastructure into insurgent-controlled areas.
And Iran is no pure place, either, as a strong reformist reads a renunciation of his reform career. This sounds like there might be some of those techniques described in the CIA report applied to get the desired confession.
Domestically, a quick blast from the past - namely "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." - a flier from time past that claimed Abraham Lincoln was secretly Black.
On economics, the forecasts for defecits and unemployment will be bigger than previously reported on, which is the nature of defecits and the like - they tend to run over. Of course, that means here comes the criticism of defecits and planned defecits and the ways of paying for those defecits, all of which are somehow wrong in principle, because entities like the WSJ don't like them. Or are part of a larger plan to have the government take over more of our (meaning, the rich) life and income. This defecit derision combines with a feeling that the Fed Chair did things in a very bloody and ineffective manner in his first term, so that hopefully he will do it right in his second to make for dissastisfaction across classes.
We could, instead, do as California has done and hold a garage sale to try and make up some of the budget shortfalls. Although California does have the advantage of having Schwarzenegger-autographed things. Not to say that Barack Obama couldn't make a mint on his signature, but they're probably still going to want Arnold stuff later on.
A prominent fundraiser for the Clinton campaign and other Democrats has been indicted on fraud charges, using documents to induce Citigroup to loan him money based on assets he did not actually have.
The current Attorney General special prosecution on the CIA's use of torture has angered both sides of the political spectrum, for either existing at all or not going nearly far enough in scope. If you're going to investigate, do it right, and be complete - go all the way up the chain to the top, regardless of accusations that investigations themselves endanger the security of the nation. (I think Cheney may still be worried that a properly done investigation will finger him as being highly involved in this.)
In opinions,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bradhicks lays out how it's pretty easy to spot a bubble, especially one abotu to collapse - when people tell you that you're a fool to invest in it, but some other fool down the road will invest in it at a much higher rate, letting you succeed at the pyramid scheme.
Mr. Lind says the Barack Obama needs to be rescued from neoliberalism, which is pretty centrist-conservative, and returned to the actual liberal and progressive wing, more Roosevelt, less Clinton. Amen, sah.
Ms. Frazer has suggestions for improving relations with Africa, including the relocation of the U.S. African command to somewhere inside Africa.
Leading off tonight, the cateogry of People Deserving of a Gentle Mocking, Marcia Segelstein talks about the preconceptions liberals have of conservatives, including that liberals believe conservatives are evil, while conservatives believe liberals are wrong, and other conservative preconceptions of liberals. Considering who have been the standard-bearers and visible people on the conservative spectrum, I can see where she feels the reasonable ones are being maligned, because nobody's taking time to listen to them and change their point of view. Would help, then, to put the reasonable people into the positions of power and to make them the visible and audible people of the movement. Boss Limbaugh doesn't help the conservative cause, and neither does the ability to make it stick that he's really the head of conservatism.
Into the category of People Deserving Scorn and Derision, The Washington Times runs a piece equivocating high-level federal staff being eligible for extra assistance in paying back their student loans with corporate executive bonuses for companies that took bailout cash. Both are in debt, yes, and both are getting assistance from taxpayers, sure, so clearly there's totally a perfect analogue between the two. Except one is rewarding clearly poor behavior with money after running a company so far into the ground they need a bailout, and the other is assistance for people to help pay back their increasingly punishing, but still necessary, student loans, where taking university education is generally considered to be a good thing for people. Yeah, totally equivalent.
Also in this category, Ms. Parker talks about how a government health care option will force out voluntary Christian charities, insurance co-ops, and clinics that take care fo each other through donations and generosity, as well as the Democratic notation that most of the health care scare stuff is, well, not true as some sort of "we will brook no dissent and all our opponents are liars" message. Ms. Parker impugns the President's credibility on moral issues like social justice because he supports the choice to abort and the ability for all persons to form domestic marriage-type contracts, and because he believes there are some things the government can do better than the private sector (thus, the "freedom"-loving people are evil, in her caricature of his worldview). This really feels like two columns, one about how the President is immoral and a socialist and nobody should ever listen to him, and another about how Christian America is already doing fine at taking care of the uninsured. Neither of which is true, but separated they would at least cohere together better.
At the bottom of the barrel, though, People Deserving of the Title Worst Persons in the World (at least for today), Mr. Thiessen, who starts with a claim that the CIA's torture program was legal and tacks on that it was effective, well-regulated, and corraled any sort of abuse or deviation from the legal program. Of what we know, he says, all those things documented were excesses outside of approved procedure. The approved procedure, says he, was effective and cracked even Kalid Sheik Mohammed. He claims all this despite the report itself clearly documenting things that would count as illegal under the laws of the United States and the treaties it is a signatory to, then and now, regardless of any memos written justifying the practices. The final nail in his coffin is his claim that "the real crime that comes to light is the Obama administration's decision to eliminate this capability and prosecute those who stopped the next attack." Not according to the current strictures - the special prosecutor is only looking into those excesses. And the claim that these sorts of prosecutions and investigations will stop the intelligence community from being effective begs the question of what kind of intelligence system we have if lawlessness is required for effectiveness. We can do better, and it starts with a real investigation into what happened and how many laws and treaties have been broken, then and now. Even if that investigation turns out to exonerate everyone, it will be better to have done a thorough investigation than to have put up a fig leaf and claimed it was a three-piece suit.
In technology, the increasing danger from aging and not well-maintained hydroelectric dams, an attempt to prove the evolutionary link between certain Aves and dinosaurs by transforming a chicken into a chickenosaurus, and using a converted top-open freezer as a superefficient refrigerator.
Last for tonight, the FCC is soliciting input for a definition of broadband. So if you think better speeds for gaming and media are a key requirement of that, let your voice be heard.
If you're against the idea of a group of high-powered politicians and central bankers making decisions that benefit the rich of all of their countries at the expense of everyone else, and happen to be planning to be in the Pittsburgh area on September 24-25, you can joni up to coordinate your anticapitalist resistance with others while the G-20 summit goes on.
Also, the xkcd that everyone who's done unofficial (or official) tech support for someone else has saved, claimed, printed, or otherwise made mention of.
Finally, I still want to know how supposedly having 200GB free on my drive turned into having almost no space free in all of my moving around. I guess it really is true - the clutter expands to fit the available space. Time to go pruning, I guess.
The Dead Pool claims Senator Edward Kennedy, the last of the three Kennedy brothers, at 77 years of age. Cause: Cancer. Cue the parade of people, from all walks of life and identifications, taht feel the impact of this loss.
Out in the world today, China admits to having transplanted the organs of those killed by the justice system into recipients, claiming they will try to go away from that system to a voluntary one. Some part of me thinks that using the organs of those killed by the government may be an attempt at restitution, but only if those killed were all legitimate criminals and bad people, which isn't probably true in China.
Afghanistan continues to be an explosive topic, this time targeting a company planning on building infrastructure into insurgent-controlled areas.
And Iran is no pure place, either, as a strong reformist reads a renunciation of his reform career. This sounds like there might be some of those techniques described in the CIA report applied to get the desired confession.
Domestically, a quick blast from the past - namely "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." - a flier from time past that claimed Abraham Lincoln was secretly Black.
On economics, the forecasts for defecits and unemployment will be bigger than previously reported on, which is the nature of defecits and the like - they tend to run over. Of course, that means here comes the criticism of defecits and planned defecits and the ways of paying for those defecits, all of which are somehow wrong in principle, because entities like the WSJ don't like them. Or are part of a larger plan to have the government take over more of our (meaning, the rich) life and income. This defecit derision combines with a feeling that the Fed Chair did things in a very bloody and ineffective manner in his first term, so that hopefully he will do it right in his second to make for dissastisfaction across classes.
We could, instead, do as California has done and hold a garage sale to try and make up some of the budget shortfalls. Although California does have the advantage of having Schwarzenegger-autographed things. Not to say that Barack Obama couldn't make a mint on his signature, but they're probably still going to want Arnold stuff later on.
A prominent fundraiser for the Clinton campaign and other Democrats has been indicted on fraud charges, using documents to induce Citigroup to loan him money based on assets he did not actually have.
The current Attorney General special prosecution on the CIA's use of torture has angered both sides of the political spectrum, for either existing at all or not going nearly far enough in scope. If you're going to investigate, do it right, and be complete - go all the way up the chain to the top, regardless of accusations that investigations themselves endanger the security of the nation. (I think Cheney may still be worried that a properly done investigation will finger him as being highly involved in this.)
In opinions,
bradhicks lays out how it's pretty easy to spot a bubble, especially one abotu to collapse - when people tell you that you're a fool to invest in it, but some other fool down the road will invest in it at a much higher rate, letting you succeed at the pyramid scheme.Mr. Lind says the Barack Obama needs to be rescued from neoliberalism, which is pretty centrist-conservative, and returned to the actual liberal and progressive wing, more Roosevelt, less Clinton. Amen, sah.
Ms. Frazer has suggestions for improving relations with Africa, including the relocation of the U.S. African command to somewhere inside Africa.
Leading off tonight, the cateogry of People Deserving of a Gentle Mocking, Marcia Segelstein talks about the preconceptions liberals have of conservatives, including that liberals believe conservatives are evil, while conservatives believe liberals are wrong, and other conservative preconceptions of liberals. Considering who have been the standard-bearers and visible people on the conservative spectrum, I can see where she feels the reasonable ones are being maligned, because nobody's taking time to listen to them and change their point of view. Would help, then, to put the reasonable people into the positions of power and to make them the visible and audible people of the movement. Boss Limbaugh doesn't help the conservative cause, and neither does the ability to make it stick that he's really the head of conservatism.
Into the category of People Deserving Scorn and Derision, The Washington Times runs a piece equivocating high-level federal staff being eligible for extra assistance in paying back their student loans with corporate executive bonuses for companies that took bailout cash. Both are in debt, yes, and both are getting assistance from taxpayers, sure, so clearly there's totally a perfect analogue between the two. Except one is rewarding clearly poor behavior with money after running a company so far into the ground they need a bailout, and the other is assistance for people to help pay back their increasingly punishing, but still necessary, student loans, where taking university education is generally considered to be a good thing for people. Yeah, totally equivalent.
Also in this category, Ms. Parker talks about how a government health care option will force out voluntary Christian charities, insurance co-ops, and clinics that take care fo each other through donations and generosity, as well as the Democratic notation that most of the health care scare stuff is, well, not true as some sort of "we will brook no dissent and all our opponents are liars" message. Ms. Parker impugns the President's credibility on moral issues like social justice because he supports the choice to abort and the ability for all persons to form domestic marriage-type contracts, and because he believes there are some things the government can do better than the private sector (thus, the "freedom"-loving people are evil, in her caricature of his worldview). This really feels like two columns, one about how the President is immoral and a socialist and nobody should ever listen to him, and another about how Christian America is already doing fine at taking care of the uninsured. Neither of which is true, but separated they would at least cohere together better.
At the bottom of the barrel, though, People Deserving of the Title Worst Persons in the World (at least for today), Mr. Thiessen, who starts with a claim that the CIA's torture program was legal and tacks on that it was effective, well-regulated, and corraled any sort of abuse or deviation from the legal program. Of what we know, he says, all those things documented were excesses outside of approved procedure. The approved procedure, says he, was effective and cracked even Kalid Sheik Mohammed. He claims all this despite the report itself clearly documenting things that would count as illegal under the laws of the United States and the treaties it is a signatory to, then and now, regardless of any memos written justifying the practices. The final nail in his coffin is his claim that "the real crime that comes to light is the Obama administration's decision to eliminate this capability and prosecute those who stopped the next attack." Not according to the current strictures - the special prosecutor is only looking into those excesses. And the claim that these sorts of prosecutions and investigations will stop the intelligence community from being effective begs the question of what kind of intelligence system we have if lawlessness is required for effectiveness. We can do better, and it starts with a real investigation into what happened and how many laws and treaties have been broken, then and now. Even if that investigation turns out to exonerate everyone, it will be better to have done a thorough investigation than to have put up a fig leaf and claimed it was a three-piece suit.
In technology, the increasing danger from aging and not well-maintained hydroelectric dams, an attempt to prove the evolutionary link between certain Aves and dinosaurs by transforming a chicken into a chickenosaurus, and using a converted top-open freezer as a superefficient refrigerator.
Last for tonight, the FCC is soliciting input for a definition of broadband. So if you think better speeds for gaming and media are a key requirement of that, let your voice be heard.
If you're against the idea of a group of high-powered politicians and central bankers making decisions that benefit the rich of all of their countries at the expense of everyone else, and happen to be planning to be in the Pittsburgh area on September 24-25, you can joni up to coordinate your anticapitalist resistance with others while the G-20 summit goes on.
