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silveradeptGreetings, all. Hopefully, you enjoyed your socialism-inspired day off work on Monday, if you are in a profession where such a day off is granted. Some quick statistics and knowledge regarding labor, economics, and the like - the finance sector of the UK pays men five times more in bonuses than it does women, on top of a significant base salary difference, forty percent of working-age Californians are unemployed, with their government and corporations looking to make it harder for them to continue on unemployment insurance and for them to get jobs, because executive salaries are sacrosanct and possibly increasing, more than 35 million Americans are on food stamps, which is about 1 in 9, populace-wise, and those that are poor are often suffering from wealth-transfer programs, like check cashing or overdraft fees, that transfer their already-small money amounts to the already rich.
Also, if you want worst people in the world up top, continue to look at Congo, where there is routine rape of women and children as a tool of war.
Out in the world today, there's nobody who can blame the Obama administration for trying not to extend good relations to Iran's Supreme Leader. Thing is, Iran seems more interested in trying to find anyone they can to blame the post-eelction protests on, instead of any reform.
Afghanistan continued to be plagued by Taliban attacks, this time a spike in the north of the country,
The United Kingdom's Justice Minister indicated oil was a part of the negotiations on how the release of Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, making the release less about humanitarian issues and more about securing contracts.
Three men were conivcted of a plot to blow up a trans-Atlantic flights. These three were the inspiration behind the restriction on carrying liquids that most of the populace still suffers under today.
And just in time for more talk about health care, The Telegraph publishes an article about a letter received claiming NHS doctors are declaring some people near death prematurely, and then insisting the near death get on their way to death, using techniques that would ignore or mask improvements in patient condition.
Domestically, All Glory to the Hypno-Toad! Err, the transcript of the President's prepared "stay in school" remarks. Now, hopefully we can put to rest all the silly opposition raised in the lesson plan, including all the persons who believe that the speech is somehow supposed to make kids think well of the leader, and how inspiring he is, and not the country or themselves. Seriously, if people think that public schooling is a hotbed of indoctrination into socialist causes, they need to go back to school for a day or three an see how little anyone can teach, much less how little anyone is learning there. Although, if the opposition is going to just be contrarian, perhaps that could be put to use, in a Bugs Bunny-style way.
The Washington Times sees the resignation of Van Jones as yet another misstep in staffing by the Obama administration, after it came to light that Mr. Jones signed a petition implicating government foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks. To some, Mr. Jones’s resignation is seen as symptomatic of a wider problem where liberal groups and persons who should be throwing up red flags are cowed into silence over the threat of loss of funding and support if they criticize the liberal party for not being liberal. Others note it as proving that Republican propagnda is winning because the Democrats have no interest or will to stand up to it, doing the job of destroying themselves admirably with no real help from the opposition except to make thigns crazier and crazier.
Oooh, interesting. John Ashcroft can be sued for arresting people as material witnesses in the wake of 9/11 without having probable cause. On the obverse of transparency and accountability, the CIA is asking for an investigation as to whether the leak that told us about the failed program to assassinate foreign leaders broke laws by leaking classified information. Whcih sort of begs the question as to what is still behind the clasified shield that the populace really does need to know about.
The Republicans are so very leaderless that they'll entertain theories about all sorts of people running for President in 2012.
Jumping overboard from a cruise ship is generally stupid. Be glad there was another nearby to rescue you.
On depressing matters, because the recession has increased homelessness, its increasingly hard for school district to execute the dictates of the law regarding homoeless children and their schooling.
Despite what the progressive wing would like to believe, it appears the astroturfing and intimidation campaigns have worked on some members of Congress, while others may switch their support to opposition if the intimidation gets its way and the public option vanishes. In other words, it looks like a CF out there - and the President is poised to give speeches to Congress that will show his position, so we’ll know soon enough whether or not the President abandons progressives in favor of backstabbers, or tells the backstabbers to go to hell and courts his progressives. The opposition is clamoring for the government to scrap it all and start over again, offering at best their compromise plans that wouldn’t have a public option. Either way, there’s a chance the bill will fail. If it does, though, be okay with one in five claims being denied on average, possibly more, depending on who your HMO provider is. And remember, despite what others tell you, most of the negative you've heard about health care in other countries is false. So despite the cameras perhaps focusing on an at least partially-astroturf campaign headed to Washington D.C. this weekend, keep in mind that there’s more to it than meets the lens.
Or, if you’d like a succinct allegory of the whole health care debate, read about how the blue bus system in Delhi operates, and how in the name of profit and revenue, the bus drivers are forced to drive unsafely in unsafe vehicles that kill pedestrians and passengers. This, while those same drivers have to rent their buses from the people who actually own them, and who aren’t implicated if the buses are involved in collisions and deaths.
On the fringe, Mr. Beck accuses Rockefeller Center of having socialist and fascist imagery in its art. Because one character holds a hammer, and the other a sickle. And because NBC is there, we think.
And worse - a dispute on traffic citations between police and the fire chief in Jericho, Arkansas ended with the police chief being shot from behind. In court. The police of Jericho were apparently very ticket-happy, to the point that the fire chief complained he couldn’t get a hold of anyone becasuse they were all writing traffic citations (for full disclosure, that’s all seven officers.)
In opinions, Messrs. O'Hanlon and Riedel want to highlight the reasons we should continue in Afghanistan, trying to compare them to the reason why we shouldn’t.
A good unsigned from teh WSJ about the refusal of Atlanta mayorial candidates to get sucked into arguments about who would be better for the city based on their race. Now, the WSJ says it because it’s about candidates saying the whtie candidate shouldn’t be disadvantaged because they’re white, but they miss a broader point about how we’ve seen since the candidacy of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton just how much force race- and gender-based arguments still have in the populace.
Ms. Strassel opines abotu the "bi-polar" Mr. Reid, who says he doesn't point fingers for political gain, and then talks about the astroturf campaigns happening around the country, stuck between a constituency that wants him to work with Republicans and a party that wants him to send them packing.
Mr. Grimm talks about how the airport at Johnstown, PA is the perfect example of earmarks gone wasteful. The article lacks any other big earmarks he could have also included for comparison, to make his piece into something other than a hit job on Congressperson Murtha.
Governor Daniels of Indiana says states should expect to live with less revenue from now on, while criticizing the Obama administration's policy toward spending and programs. The WSJ tacks on an unsigned criticizing how subsidization has not resulted in job gains in Michigan, despite the state’s attempts to green tech and modernize their work and workforce. The examples given are pretty bad attempts to make jobs by giving money to filmmakers, and then go back to the standard line of “If only they had cut taxes, things would be better!” as what should have happened. Let me pause for a moment while the native Michigeese laugh.
Mr. Driessen returns to climate chagne bills, a topic that hasn't had quite as much national attention, but doesn't move from the previous position that climate change bills are really a plot to control your life.
Earning himself mockey for his tone and his substance, Mr. Krauthammer talks about the fall of Obama, how the great egoist thought we elected him for him and proceeded in that way, resulting in the “totally grass-roots” opposition of “real people” to his plans and policies, who he then called a mob, insulting those “real people” (for calling them what they were), and his insistence that his opposition simply be quiet (as if it weren’t grounded firmly in the context of “the people who made this mess are probably not the people to be talking about how it doesn’t need fixing”). It’s all very much the “Obama is a super egomaniac who has lost his magic spell over the people and now they see him for the socialist destroyer of worlds he is” line of thinking, that places all the blame for how things are solely on the actions of the new President, ignoring the astroturfing going on, ignoring conservative fear rhetoric, scare tactics, and outright lies that some part of the populace has swallowed and internalized, and ignoring how little-to-nothing his opposition has done in working with him or even presenting alternatives that aren’t “deny there’s a problem”. And it’s working in some ways. Krauthammer also ignores the fact that Obama is catching hell from the progressive part that elected him for not felivering on the progressive promises that he made during the campaign.
Senator Coburn simplifies all the issues at hand to a statement that the people don't trust the government to think well of them in the long-term, and thus the government should cut back on spending as well as forgetting about a public health care option if they want the populace to actually trust them on anything. the WSJ follows with an unsigned desiring the rest of the stimulus money be cut and not paid out, so that the Market (all praise to its name) can finally bring the recession to end because the smothering government blanket will finally be lifted.
In technology, Sony of America sued for pirating music from an artist, taking single songs and compiling them into an eighth album, despite the fact that none of those songs were produced or sold to Sony during his seven-album contract with them. Based on the precedents of several tens of thousands of dollars per song, possibly even per infringement copy, Sony should be paying some... billions of dollars in penalties, right? Pretty easy case. According to the relevant Slashdot thread, “Precedent from the Jammie Thomas infringement and distribution case gives us $80K per song. Sony vs. Joel Tenenbaum gives $22.5K per song. So 6,397 CDs at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51,176 infringing songs, with (IMHO) intent to distribute. The damages to Fernandez should be $1,151,460,000 using the Tenenbaum precedent or $4,094,080,000 using the Thomas precedent. Seems very straightforward to me.”
Elsewhere, a fire-breathing dragon boat in Osaka, companies that can mine and tie together multiple data streams and sources to find terror plots, spy infiltrations, and other intelligence-useful things, an asthetically-pleasing algae colony to generate biofuel from solar and light power, e-readers that look and feel like actual books (this one has a hinge), along with possible multiscreen multitasking (new PDA, anyone?), continuing to analyze a future where university is available on-line (this service mentioned seems to have found a way into accreditation, too), and the Firefox plug-in that provides volunteer or machine translations of foreign webpages in a few clicks.
In sciences, R.O.U.S? Oh, they definitely exist, and so do the prairies being created on top of the garbage dumps.
Last for tonight, crop circles are far older than you might think.
Also, if you want worst people in the world up top, continue to look at Congo, where there is routine rape of women and children as a tool of war.
Out in the world today, there's nobody who can blame the Obama administration for trying not to extend good relations to Iran's Supreme Leader. Thing is, Iran seems more interested in trying to find anyone they can to blame the post-eelction protests on, instead of any reform.
Afghanistan continued to be plagued by Taliban attacks, this time a spike in the north of the country,
The United Kingdom's Justice Minister indicated oil was a part of the negotiations on how the release of Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, making the release less about humanitarian issues and more about securing contracts.
Three men were conivcted of a plot to blow up a trans-Atlantic flights. These three were the inspiration behind the restriction on carrying liquids that most of the populace still suffers under today.
And just in time for more talk about health care, The Telegraph publishes an article about a letter received claiming NHS doctors are declaring some people near death prematurely, and then insisting the near death get on their way to death, using techniques that would ignore or mask improvements in patient condition.
Domestically, All Glory to the Hypno-Toad! Err, the transcript of the President's prepared "stay in school" remarks. Now, hopefully we can put to rest all the silly opposition raised in the lesson plan, including all the persons who believe that the speech is somehow supposed to make kids think well of the leader, and how inspiring he is, and not the country or themselves. Seriously, if people think that public schooling is a hotbed of indoctrination into socialist causes, they need to go back to school for a day or three an see how little anyone can teach, much less how little anyone is learning there. Although, if the opposition is going to just be contrarian, perhaps that could be put to use, in a Bugs Bunny-style way.
The Washington Times sees the resignation of Van Jones as yet another misstep in staffing by the Obama administration, after it came to light that Mr. Jones signed a petition implicating government foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks. To some, Mr. Jones’s resignation is seen as symptomatic of a wider problem where liberal groups and persons who should be throwing up red flags are cowed into silence over the threat of loss of funding and support if they criticize the liberal party for not being liberal. Others note it as proving that Republican propagnda is winning because the Democrats have no interest or will to stand up to it, doing the job of destroying themselves admirably with no real help from the opposition except to make thigns crazier and crazier.
Oooh, interesting. John Ashcroft can be sued for arresting people as material witnesses in the wake of 9/11 without having probable cause. On the obverse of transparency and accountability, the CIA is asking for an investigation as to whether the leak that told us about the failed program to assassinate foreign leaders broke laws by leaking classified information. Whcih sort of begs the question as to what is still behind the clasified shield that the populace really does need to know about.
The Republicans are so very leaderless that they'll entertain theories about all sorts of people running for President in 2012.
Jumping overboard from a cruise ship is generally stupid. Be glad there was another nearby to rescue you.
On depressing matters, because the recession has increased homelessness, its increasingly hard for school district to execute the dictates of the law regarding homoeless children and their schooling.
Despite what the progressive wing would like to believe, it appears the astroturfing and intimidation campaigns have worked on some members of Congress, while others may switch their support to opposition if the intimidation gets its way and the public option vanishes. In other words, it looks like a CF out there - and the President is poised to give speeches to Congress that will show his position, so we’ll know soon enough whether or not the President abandons progressives in favor of backstabbers, or tells the backstabbers to go to hell and courts his progressives. The opposition is clamoring for the government to scrap it all and start over again, offering at best their compromise plans that wouldn’t have a public option. Either way, there’s a chance the bill will fail. If it does, though, be okay with one in five claims being denied on average, possibly more, depending on who your HMO provider is. And remember, despite what others tell you, most of the negative you've heard about health care in other countries is false. So despite the cameras perhaps focusing on an at least partially-astroturf campaign headed to Washington D.C. this weekend, keep in mind that there’s more to it than meets the lens.
Or, if you’d like a succinct allegory of the whole health care debate, read about how the blue bus system in Delhi operates, and how in the name of profit and revenue, the bus drivers are forced to drive unsafely in unsafe vehicles that kill pedestrians and passengers. This, while those same drivers have to rent their buses from the people who actually own them, and who aren’t implicated if the buses are involved in collisions and deaths.
On the fringe, Mr. Beck accuses Rockefeller Center of having socialist and fascist imagery in its art. Because one character holds a hammer, and the other a sickle. And because NBC is there, we think.
And worse - a dispute on traffic citations between police and the fire chief in Jericho, Arkansas ended with the police chief being shot from behind. In court. The police of Jericho were apparently very ticket-happy, to the point that the fire chief complained he couldn’t get a hold of anyone becasuse they were all writing traffic citations (for full disclosure, that’s all seven officers.)
In opinions, Messrs. O'Hanlon and Riedel want to highlight the reasons we should continue in Afghanistan, trying to compare them to the reason why we shouldn’t.
A good unsigned from teh WSJ about the refusal of Atlanta mayorial candidates to get sucked into arguments about who would be better for the city based on their race. Now, the WSJ says it because it’s about candidates saying the whtie candidate shouldn’t be disadvantaged because they’re white, but they miss a broader point about how we’ve seen since the candidacy of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton just how much force race- and gender-based arguments still have in the populace.
Ms. Strassel opines abotu the "bi-polar" Mr. Reid, who says he doesn't point fingers for political gain, and then talks about the astroturf campaigns happening around the country, stuck between a constituency that wants him to work with Republicans and a party that wants him to send them packing.
Mr. Grimm talks about how the airport at Johnstown, PA is the perfect example of earmarks gone wasteful. The article lacks any other big earmarks he could have also included for comparison, to make his piece into something other than a hit job on Congressperson Murtha.
Governor Daniels of Indiana says states should expect to live with less revenue from now on, while criticizing the Obama administration's policy toward spending and programs. The WSJ tacks on an unsigned criticizing how subsidization has not resulted in job gains in Michigan, despite the state’s attempts to green tech and modernize their work and workforce. The examples given are pretty bad attempts to make jobs by giving money to filmmakers, and then go back to the standard line of “If only they had cut taxes, things would be better!” as what should have happened. Let me pause for a moment while the native Michigeese laugh.
Mr. Driessen returns to climate chagne bills, a topic that hasn't had quite as much national attention, but doesn't move from the previous position that climate change bills are really a plot to control your life.
Earning himself mockey for his tone and his substance, Mr. Krauthammer talks about the fall of Obama, how the great egoist thought we elected him for him and proceeded in that way, resulting in the “totally grass-roots” opposition of “real people” to his plans and policies, who he then called a mob, insulting those “real people” (for calling them what they were), and his insistence that his opposition simply be quiet (as if it weren’t grounded firmly in the context of “the people who made this mess are probably not the people to be talking about how it doesn’t need fixing”). It’s all very much the “Obama is a super egomaniac who has lost his magic spell over the people and now they see him for the socialist destroyer of worlds he is” line of thinking, that places all the blame for how things are solely on the actions of the new President, ignoring the astroturfing going on, ignoring conservative fear rhetoric, scare tactics, and outright lies that some part of the populace has swallowed and internalized, and ignoring how little-to-nothing his opposition has done in working with him or even presenting alternatives that aren’t “deny there’s a problem”. And it’s working in some ways. Krauthammer also ignores the fact that Obama is catching hell from the progressive part that elected him for not felivering on the progressive promises that he made during the campaign.
Senator Coburn simplifies all the issues at hand to a statement that the people don't trust the government to think well of them in the long-term, and thus the government should cut back on spending as well as forgetting about a public health care option if they want the populace to actually trust them on anything. the WSJ follows with an unsigned desiring the rest of the stimulus money be cut and not paid out, so that the Market (all praise to its name) can finally bring the recession to end because the smothering government blanket will finally be lifted.
In technology, Sony of America sued for pirating music from an artist, taking single songs and compiling them into an eighth album, despite the fact that none of those songs were produced or sold to Sony during his seven-album contract with them. Based on the precedents of several tens of thousands of dollars per song, possibly even per infringement copy, Sony should be paying some... billions of dollars in penalties, right? Pretty easy case. According to the relevant Slashdot thread, “Precedent from the Jammie Thomas infringement and distribution case gives us $80K per song. Sony vs. Joel Tenenbaum gives $22.5K per song. So 6,397 CDs at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51,176 infringing songs, with (IMHO) intent to distribute. The damages to Fernandez should be $1,151,460,000 using the Tenenbaum precedent or $4,094,080,000 using the Thomas precedent. Seems very straightforward to me.”
Elsewhere, a fire-breathing dragon boat in Osaka, companies that can mine and tie together multiple data streams and sources to find terror plots, spy infiltrations, and other intelligence-useful things, an asthetically-pleasing algae colony to generate biofuel from solar and light power, e-readers that look and feel like actual books (this one has a hinge), along with possible multiscreen multitasking (new PDA, anyone?), continuing to analyze a future where university is available on-line (this service mentioned seems to have found a way into accreditation, too), and the Firefox plug-in that provides volunteer or machine translations of foreign webpages in a few clicks.
In sciences, R.O.U.S? Oh, they definitely exist, and so do the prairies being created on top of the garbage dumps.
Last for tonight, crop circles are far older than you might think.
