![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptWe begin today with some nice clear infographics about how Payday Loan Sharks, Rent-to-Own places, and credit cards that are supposed to help you build your credit back up all screw you over in fees and interest rates far beyond what any normal loan would be.
From there, we observe a moment of silence for all the people still struggling with a country/world that sees them as second class because they're LGBT. And then, we’re going to peer in on how Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is going to end the career of another soldier, outed by a third party to his military commanders. His letter to the President asks why he is good enough to serve in wartime, where he is desperately needed, but he will be discharged as soon as he returns to peacetime. His CO has basically said that the discharge paperwork will be prepared, and then deliberately lost until after his deployment is over, when it will manage to resurface as it has to.
Having done that, we will snark the absolute hell out of the reasoning behind the resignation of Dr. George Rekers, caught with a Rentboy. He says he's resigning to fight the "false media reports about me" and that he’s not gay and never has been. Yet he’s resigning. We could be altruistic and say that he doesn’t want to drag the name of his cure the gays quack organization through the mud of having one of its most prominent people found to be with a male prostitute, but Occam demands the simpler solution - he’s resigning because he doesn’t want the press release issued that says he’s been fired for being caught with a male prostitute. We have a suggestion that might work best - take you own cure the gay therapy course. See how effective it is. And then we’ll see how long it takes for you to go back to Rentboy.
But we do have a positive thing for you tonight as well - the American Episcopal Church consecrated its very first openly-lesbian bishop, the Reverend Mary Glasspool, over objections from the more conservative Anglican community surrounding them. I hope that she proves to be a shining example of holiness and peace.
And we get into professional realms with the psosibility that the Oak Creek Library in Wisconsin will purchase and install cellular signal jamming equipment, allowing for technological enforcement of the idea that cellular phone calls in the library are not permitted. Past whatever point of legality the library has to work through, I kind of like the idea for cutting down on nuisances, but at the same time, I wonder what break times would be like, and how far the jamming equipment’s range extends.
Last out, something that The Thoughtscream (now back in business, although not necessarily as a business yet) may be interested in - Google's efforts to resurrect the journalism industry they are accused of killing, Rupert Murdoch's paywall wager, and some of the competitors Thoughtscream may have, as they try to find the right way to make profit and good journalism mesh. Oh, and as a reminder, even nonprofit places like NPR rely on corporate donations and funding to broadcast, so you may want to check and see if certain stories get and stay buried on those channels, too.
Out in the world today, I can’t make heads or tails of source veractiy, so take the following with a grain of salt (unless you can confirm it, then, please, by all means, do): it appears that a government-run jobs center in the United Kingdom was posting work for young women to find work doing X-rated things and making dirty talk on web cameras.
Domestically, an attempt at passing another bill to generate jobs was pulled after Republicans passed amendments prohibiting funding going to anyone officially disciplined for viewing pr0n at work (bye, SEC!), cut the scope of the program to two years, cut all the new programs being created by the bill, and requiring a fundign freeze until the budget is balanced. In essence, the bill was pulled because it had been killed. Watch the media and comment squad make noise about the anti-porn provision instead of the parts that made the bill into a eunuch.
The Senate, for its part, introduced a new energy bill intended to lessen the impact of future petro-resource disasters, by adding on tougher regulation, tougher carbon-emissions standards and attempts to reduce dependence on petrochemicals as power sources.
The Slacktivist points out that Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics will cheerily tell you that the majority thinks screwing the minoirty is a-ok, even if actually screwing the minority screws themselves as well. And that’s without trickery, like John McCain's new ad talking with a sheriff who is not from the area he filmed the advert in, because the sheriff of that area hates border fences and the Papers Please law. Or flip-flops, as Gubernatorial candidate McCollum has done, citing the amended Papers Please law as totally acceptable to support and duplicate, while the original Papers Please law was not, despite most of the changes being cosmetic instead of substantive.
The Washington Times commits abysmal journalism by combining two stories, one about the Attorney General's unwillingness to feed the Concept War pornographers by saying "radical Islam" is behind the Times Square attack, and another about the Attorney General's criticisms of the Papers Please law being based mostly on what he's heard instead of a reading fo the law. Now, to the audience of the Times, it’s just two things to make you hate the Democrats more, but those two stories have nothing to do with each other. What are they doing in the same space?
Even though it’s not due out for a significant time, the Census Bureau's analysis of a new way to determine poverty is already being decried as a sham and a ploy to funnel yet more money from the hardowrking, taxpaying, patriotic rich to the bottom-feeding, freeloading, welfare-scamming poor. Even though the alternative measure is not going to be used for any official eligibility.
In technology, one word about wanting a more private alternative to social networking tools, and look at all the alternatives that spring up, one Facebook-Alternative having garnered more than $100K in seed funding already. People want to talk, but they want to do so securely, and with privacy options that they want to set. I suspect stories like this one, detailing why someone quit, are going to be mroe numerous with time. One of those groups got covered by the New York Times, and the photo editor apparently missed a programmnig sex joke, which was pointed out them after the fact. Of course, the web version cropped the photo, but the print version couldn’t recall it in such a time. I kind of wish the NYT had the stones to leave the web version as it is. If for no other reason than to draw traffic to the site so all the people could look at the dirty jokes.
Speaking of dirty jokes, Jupiter has lost a belt. He’ll get it back soon enough.
And because we’re flush with things involving sexuality today, Wikipedia is having a schism war, between the potential negative publicity of being classified as a provider of hardcore pornography and the mission of Wikipedia to be an encyclopedia on all notable topics, which would include some things that are best illustrated with pictures that are pornographic.
Finally, more seriously, General Cartwright suggested the military needs a better definition of what cyberwarfare is and to put more effort into developing a defense system that is not based completely on defending things when they happen. To hit that point, although probably at an angle, researchers have demonstrated it is technologically possible to hack a car's computer systems, and that once understood, could send remote commands that could kill the engine and lock the brakes at speed.
Into opinions, where much merriment and stupidity is always found. We’ll start with a story where an LA times writer notices there are blogs out there about some women quest to be the perfect 50s housewife, outside the context of religion and/or fetish role-play, and then tries to pass it off as The Next Big Thing. For both topic and attampted inflation, cue Jezebel's response, mocking the choices of Desperate Housewives and Mad Men as the possible ideal situations for these women.
Mr. Elder attempts to blame reverse racism and the self-reliant, not blaming others attitude for why Nashville's flooding hasn't garnered more mainstream media coverage and Presidential prononucements, dusting off an excuse to say “Barack Obama doesn’t care about white people”. We also note that emergency coordination has been a lot swifter than the event being compared to, and the administration is now trying to juggle two major disasters or more at once, a complication the previous administrator did not appear to have. But who needs facts when you can garner as much reverse-racism accusations as you can?
Mr. Tyrrell runs a shaggy dog story of a visit to Times Square, before getting to his point in the last few paragraphs - people making bombs and trying to explode them are doing so because they're trying to capture the American Dream of being someone, and that infamy involving explosives is the way to go in a society that doesn’t think impressing the chicks is a useful pasttime for idle men. I’m sure it makes internally consistent sense for Mr. Tyrrell, but I’m almost inclined to say that this particular mode is intended to impress men, and gives it a far more homoerotic turn if we extend the metaphor even further past the point of lunacy than it already was. I wonder what he’d think about that.
Knox County Republican chair apologizes for one of his people stealing a poster from a teacher's classroom, but claims the teacher was asking for it based on the stuff in his room. So someone went poking their noses in places they shouldn’t be, then complained about what was there, bandying about the word “brainwashing”, then stole some of the stuff that was there, and we’re supposed to take a victim-blaming apology and be done with it? Screw that.
Climbing the ladder of importance, though, I’m not sure what’s worse - that "believes in evolution and that the Bible is not totally divine Word of God 100 percent true" is considered a legitimate attack line by some group in Alabama, or that the candidate attacked chose to defend himself against the attack by citing his crusade to teach non-science in science class and reiterating his belief that all the Bible is true. It’s a twin set of stupidity, unless the first group is really a secret satire group out to prove how dumb the candidate is...
Elected Congresspersons, of course, do not avoid the problem of jamming their feet in their mouths. Witness Michelle Bachmann, espousing her belief that the governemnt secretly controls the private sector, as Mussolini did earlier in the last century. So Beck’s got a lock on Hitler, Bachmann wants Mussolini. Stalin’s still up for grabs, but no love for Hirohito? Really?
Getting more serious (finally!), you know you've blown it when even the pro-Concept War, pro-indefinite detention, pro-unlawful enemy combatant designation Wall Street Journal says modifying Miranda is a bad idea. Take heed, Mr. Holder. Although don’t take heed on their advice to treat any terror suspect as an unlawful enemy combatant deserving of no rights, if you please. Nation of laws and all that.
Mr. Carroll accuses the Democratic majority of not passing a budget because they don't want the American populace to see what kind of profligate spenders they are.
Ms. McNamara offers advice for the new government of the UK - be as anti-EU as you can and the people will love you. Coming from the American conservative think tank, which is arguably more right than the UK ever will be. No odd juxtapositions there! Mr. Henninger brings the message home in declaring that the Republican party should run on a platform of "We're not Europe".
Mr. Hanson defends the Papers Please law using the standard defenses (just enforcing already written law, racial profiling is what we do all the time, so it should be allowed) before slipping in a “liberals hate having illegals deported” right at the end, in claiming that people who oppose the law do so because it will be effective. Uh, no. People hate the law because it requires law enforcement officials to treat anyone who looks different with higher degrees of suspcion, allows them to basically stop someone for one reason, legal that it may be, and then detain them as a possible illegal immigrant if they don’t have all their documentation at hand, with jail and fines even for those who are here legally, and basically plants a giant stamp on the map that says “Latinos need not apply.” Which runs contrary to the idea of the United States as a place where people mix and mingle, retain their traditions and adopt new ones, and are not singled out as possible terrorists or illegal immigrants because they have different skin colors.
Mr. Fund believes Democrats have stacked the deck toward Puerto Rico becoming a fifty-first state, by allowing people who live off the island to vote on a statehood referendum, assuming the first one about commonwealth status passes. the reward is apparently that Democrats will use the new people to try and cement a long-term hold on Congress. Wishful thinking, Mr. Fund. Even the Dems should know that one new state won’t translate into a magic majority.
Mr. Pruden cloaks his dislike of Elena Kagan in a bigger piece about the supposed inviolability of the First Amendment protection of free speech, insinuating the government will use what they can to shut down speech they don’t like by classing it as hate speech. Mr. Pruden conveniently forgets that speech is already restricted in many ways - the laws against libel and slander, the restriction of shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater unless there is actually a fire, and other such measures. You’re allowed to be against the idea of the government being able to modify “free speech” to whatever it feels like, and feel uncomfortable about Elena Kagan because it looks like she supports that, but at least try to be honest about the things you cite.
Mr. Trzupek suggets that the current administration is willing to latch onto anything it can, no matter how crackpot, that will give it the power to drop more regulations and control on the people. And on the other side, Mr. Rich alleges the Obama administration may be using government agencies and timing to smear or manipulate public opinion about people and organizations, citing the SEC’s move against Goldman Sachs in the middle of the “Bad, Wall Street. Very, very, bad” campaign and Marco Rubio’s sudden brush with the IRS after he was leading Charlie Crist. (Because President Obama wants to bail the moderate out of a bad situation against the Tea Partier who will undoubtedly help his case for re-election.)
Final opinion for tonight - a letter to the University that provided the debt and the piece of paper - perhaps you should rethink your bigger tuitions in favor of making college mroe affordable and no saddling all collegegoers with loans they will be paying back until they are very old.
Last out for tonight, did we mention that Lord Jesus Christ got hit by a car recently? And that people will finally get to listen to the tape experiments of William S. Burroughs?
This is Silver Adept, remind you to help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered - and there are lots of options available for it to be done free or reduced cost.
From there, we observe a moment of silence for all the people still struggling with a country/world that sees them as second class because they're LGBT. And then, we’re going to peer in on how Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is going to end the career of another soldier, outed by a third party to his military commanders. His letter to the President asks why he is good enough to serve in wartime, where he is desperately needed, but he will be discharged as soon as he returns to peacetime. His CO has basically said that the discharge paperwork will be prepared, and then deliberately lost until after his deployment is over, when it will manage to resurface as it has to.
Having done that, we will snark the absolute hell out of the reasoning behind the resignation of Dr. George Rekers, caught with a Rentboy. He says he's resigning to fight the "false media reports about me" and that he’s not gay and never has been. Yet he’s resigning. We could be altruistic and say that he doesn’t want to drag the name of his cure the gays quack organization through the mud of having one of its most prominent people found to be with a male prostitute, but Occam demands the simpler solution - he’s resigning because he doesn’t want the press release issued that says he’s been fired for being caught with a male prostitute. We have a suggestion that might work best - take you own cure the gay therapy course. See how effective it is. And then we’ll see how long it takes for you to go back to Rentboy.
But we do have a positive thing for you tonight as well - the American Episcopal Church consecrated its very first openly-lesbian bishop, the Reverend Mary Glasspool, over objections from the more conservative Anglican community surrounding them. I hope that she proves to be a shining example of holiness and peace.
And we get into professional realms with the psosibility that the Oak Creek Library in Wisconsin will purchase and install cellular signal jamming equipment, allowing for technological enforcement of the idea that cellular phone calls in the library are not permitted. Past whatever point of legality the library has to work through, I kind of like the idea for cutting down on nuisances, but at the same time, I wonder what break times would be like, and how far the jamming equipment’s range extends.
Last out, something that The Thoughtscream (now back in business, although not necessarily as a business yet) may be interested in - Google's efforts to resurrect the journalism industry they are accused of killing, Rupert Murdoch's paywall wager, and some of the competitors Thoughtscream may have, as they try to find the right way to make profit and good journalism mesh. Oh, and as a reminder, even nonprofit places like NPR rely on corporate donations and funding to broadcast, so you may want to check and see if certain stories get and stay buried on those channels, too.
Out in the world today, I can’t make heads or tails of source veractiy, so take the following with a grain of salt (unless you can confirm it, then, please, by all means, do): it appears that a government-run jobs center in the United Kingdom was posting work for young women to find work doing X-rated things and making dirty talk on web cameras.
Domestically, an attempt at passing another bill to generate jobs was pulled after Republicans passed amendments prohibiting funding going to anyone officially disciplined for viewing pr0n at work (bye, SEC!), cut the scope of the program to two years, cut all the new programs being created by the bill, and requiring a fundign freeze until the budget is balanced. In essence, the bill was pulled because it had been killed. Watch the media and comment squad make noise about the anti-porn provision instead of the parts that made the bill into a eunuch.
The Senate, for its part, introduced a new energy bill intended to lessen the impact of future petro-resource disasters, by adding on tougher regulation, tougher carbon-emissions standards and attempts to reduce dependence on petrochemicals as power sources.
The Slacktivist points out that Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics will cheerily tell you that the majority thinks screwing the minoirty is a-ok, even if actually screwing the minority screws themselves as well. And that’s without trickery, like John McCain's new ad talking with a sheriff who is not from the area he filmed the advert in, because the sheriff of that area hates border fences and the Papers Please law. Or flip-flops, as Gubernatorial candidate McCollum has done, citing the amended Papers Please law as totally acceptable to support and duplicate, while the original Papers Please law was not, despite most of the changes being cosmetic instead of substantive.
The Washington Times commits abysmal journalism by combining two stories, one about the Attorney General's unwillingness to feed the Concept War pornographers by saying "radical Islam" is behind the Times Square attack, and another about the Attorney General's criticisms of the Papers Please law being based mostly on what he's heard instead of a reading fo the law. Now, to the audience of the Times, it’s just two things to make you hate the Democrats more, but those two stories have nothing to do with each other. What are they doing in the same space?
Even though it’s not due out for a significant time, the Census Bureau's analysis of a new way to determine poverty is already being decried as a sham and a ploy to funnel yet more money from the hardowrking, taxpaying, patriotic rich to the bottom-feeding, freeloading, welfare-scamming poor. Even though the alternative measure is not going to be used for any official eligibility.
In technology, one word about wanting a more private alternative to social networking tools, and look at all the alternatives that spring up, one Facebook-Alternative having garnered more than $100K in seed funding already. People want to talk, but they want to do so securely, and with privacy options that they want to set. I suspect stories like this one, detailing why someone quit, are going to be mroe numerous with time. One of those groups got covered by the New York Times, and the photo editor apparently missed a programmnig sex joke, which was pointed out them after the fact. Of course, the web version cropped the photo, but the print version couldn’t recall it in such a time. I kind of wish the NYT had the stones to leave the web version as it is. If for no other reason than to draw traffic to the site so all the people could look at the dirty jokes.
Speaking of dirty jokes, Jupiter has lost a belt. He’ll get it back soon enough.
And because we’re flush with things involving sexuality today, Wikipedia is having a schism war, between the potential negative publicity of being classified as a provider of hardcore pornography and the mission of Wikipedia to be an encyclopedia on all notable topics, which would include some things that are best illustrated with pictures that are pornographic.
Finally, more seriously, General Cartwright suggested the military needs a better definition of what cyberwarfare is and to put more effort into developing a defense system that is not based completely on defending things when they happen. To hit that point, although probably at an angle, researchers have demonstrated it is technologically possible to hack a car's computer systems, and that once understood, could send remote commands that could kill the engine and lock the brakes at speed.
Into opinions, where much merriment and stupidity is always found. We’ll start with a story where an LA times writer notices there are blogs out there about some women quest to be the perfect 50s housewife, outside the context of religion and/or fetish role-play, and then tries to pass it off as The Next Big Thing. For both topic and attampted inflation, cue Jezebel's response, mocking the choices of Desperate Housewives and Mad Men as the possible ideal situations for these women.
Mr. Elder attempts to blame reverse racism and the self-reliant, not blaming others attitude for why Nashville's flooding hasn't garnered more mainstream media coverage and Presidential prononucements, dusting off an excuse to say “Barack Obama doesn’t care about white people”. We also note that emergency coordination has been a lot swifter than the event being compared to, and the administration is now trying to juggle two major disasters or more at once, a complication the previous administrator did not appear to have. But who needs facts when you can garner as much reverse-racism accusations as you can?
Mr. Tyrrell runs a shaggy dog story of a visit to Times Square, before getting to his point in the last few paragraphs - people making bombs and trying to explode them are doing so because they're trying to capture the American Dream of being someone, and that infamy involving explosives is the way to go in a society that doesn’t think impressing the chicks is a useful pasttime for idle men. I’m sure it makes internally consistent sense for Mr. Tyrrell, but I’m almost inclined to say that this particular mode is intended to impress men, and gives it a far more homoerotic turn if we extend the metaphor even further past the point of lunacy than it already was. I wonder what he’d think about that.
Knox County Republican chair apologizes for one of his people stealing a poster from a teacher's classroom, but claims the teacher was asking for it based on the stuff in his room. So someone went poking their noses in places they shouldn’t be, then complained about what was there, bandying about the word “brainwashing”, then stole some of the stuff that was there, and we’re supposed to take a victim-blaming apology and be done with it? Screw that.
Climbing the ladder of importance, though, I’m not sure what’s worse - that "believes in evolution and that the Bible is not totally divine Word of God 100 percent true" is considered a legitimate attack line by some group in Alabama, or that the candidate attacked chose to defend himself against the attack by citing his crusade to teach non-science in science class and reiterating his belief that all the Bible is true. It’s a twin set of stupidity, unless the first group is really a secret satire group out to prove how dumb the candidate is...
Elected Congresspersons, of course, do not avoid the problem of jamming their feet in their mouths. Witness Michelle Bachmann, espousing her belief that the governemnt secretly controls the private sector, as Mussolini did earlier in the last century. So Beck’s got a lock on Hitler, Bachmann wants Mussolini. Stalin’s still up for grabs, but no love for Hirohito? Really?
Getting more serious (finally!), you know you've blown it when even the pro-Concept War, pro-indefinite detention, pro-unlawful enemy combatant designation Wall Street Journal says modifying Miranda is a bad idea. Take heed, Mr. Holder. Although don’t take heed on their advice to treat any terror suspect as an unlawful enemy combatant deserving of no rights, if you please. Nation of laws and all that.
Mr. Carroll accuses the Democratic majority of not passing a budget because they don't want the American populace to see what kind of profligate spenders they are.
Ms. McNamara offers advice for the new government of the UK - be as anti-EU as you can and the people will love you. Coming from the American conservative think tank, which is arguably more right than the UK ever will be. No odd juxtapositions there! Mr. Henninger brings the message home in declaring that the Republican party should run on a platform of "We're not Europe".
Mr. Hanson defends the Papers Please law using the standard defenses (just enforcing already written law, racial profiling is what we do all the time, so it should be allowed) before slipping in a “liberals hate having illegals deported” right at the end, in claiming that people who oppose the law do so because it will be effective. Uh, no. People hate the law because it requires law enforcement officials to treat anyone who looks different with higher degrees of suspcion, allows them to basically stop someone for one reason, legal that it may be, and then detain them as a possible illegal immigrant if they don’t have all their documentation at hand, with jail and fines even for those who are here legally, and basically plants a giant stamp on the map that says “Latinos need not apply.” Which runs contrary to the idea of the United States as a place where people mix and mingle, retain their traditions and adopt new ones, and are not singled out as possible terrorists or illegal immigrants because they have different skin colors.
Mr. Fund believes Democrats have stacked the deck toward Puerto Rico becoming a fifty-first state, by allowing people who live off the island to vote on a statehood referendum, assuming the first one about commonwealth status passes. the reward is apparently that Democrats will use the new people to try and cement a long-term hold on Congress. Wishful thinking, Mr. Fund. Even the Dems should know that one new state won’t translate into a magic majority.
Mr. Pruden cloaks his dislike of Elena Kagan in a bigger piece about the supposed inviolability of the First Amendment protection of free speech, insinuating the government will use what they can to shut down speech they don’t like by classing it as hate speech. Mr. Pruden conveniently forgets that speech is already restricted in many ways - the laws against libel and slander, the restriction of shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater unless there is actually a fire, and other such measures. You’re allowed to be against the idea of the government being able to modify “free speech” to whatever it feels like, and feel uncomfortable about Elena Kagan because it looks like she supports that, but at least try to be honest about the things you cite.
Mr. Trzupek suggets that the current administration is willing to latch onto anything it can, no matter how crackpot, that will give it the power to drop more regulations and control on the people. And on the other side, Mr. Rich alleges the Obama administration may be using government agencies and timing to smear or manipulate public opinion about people and organizations, citing the SEC’s move against Goldman Sachs in the middle of the “Bad, Wall Street. Very, very, bad” campaign and Marco Rubio’s sudden brush with the IRS after he was leading Charlie Crist. (Because President Obama wants to bail the moderate out of a bad situation against the Tea Partier who will undoubtedly help his case for re-election.)
Final opinion for tonight - a letter to the University that provided the debt and the piece of paper - perhaps you should rethink your bigger tuitions in favor of making college mroe affordable and no saddling all collegegoers with loans they will be paying back until they are very old.
Last out for tonight, did we mention that Lord Jesus Christ got hit by a car recently? And that people will finally get to listen to the tape experiments of William S. Burroughs?
This is Silver Adept, remind you to help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered - and there are lots of options available for it to be done free or reduced cost.
