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silveradeptGood morning, people who believe in the power of common sense. Many of you will be disgusted and horrified by the rebuke given to a Catholic nurse by the bishop for agreeing that a life-saving abortion should be performed on a mother, with possible excommunication also given for anyone who helped or participated in the procedure. In case you were wondering whether or not the Catholic Church values fetuses over the women supposed to give birth to them and raise them, here’s your answer.
Today is also a declared International Day Against Homophobia and Trasphobia. Still hoping for the day when people are not afraid of other people for insufficient reasons. And hoping for the day where governors veto bills that would give same-sex partners the same rights that married spouses have regarding end-of-life care because Governor Pawlenty thinks that there’s no need to legally insist that same sex partners be able to make advance care decisions - their advance directives are fine. Despite the demonstrated cases where same sex partners have been denied the ability to give end-of-life decisions, or their advance directives have been challenged because the person named is a same-sex partner. We’re also hoping for the day when people don’t claim their religion gives them a free pass to behave badly toward other people. Example: owners of a bed and breakfast who refused to let two men share the same room, despite them having booked it, claiming that her religion allowed her to refuse this service and not be cited under the law for it.
Out in the world today, a robot by the name of I-Fairy become the first robot officiant at a wedding, marrying two persons on a rooftop cafe.
An ex-candidate for president in Mexico has gone missing amid "signs of violence" - it doesn’t seem like Mexico is all that safe of a country if you’re seen as rich or potentially powerful. As opposed to Somalia, where rebels killed 11 parliamentarians and it seems like anyone who doesn’t believe the same way you do could be a target for violence. Or worse, Bangkok, Thailand, where protesters clase with government forces through burning tires and homemade explosives.
The recount of the Iraqi elections confirms that the Sunni party received the most votes and seats, but not enough for an outright majority, which means it’s time for coalition-building, and that might keep Nouri al-Malaki in power through an alliance with other Shi’ite parties.
Half of the Russian populace belives bribing officials is a normal and everyday part of life, pointing out the difficulty of President Medvedev’s campaign to reform Russia into a law-abiding country. Two sides to that coin - stopping the corruption, and leaving the impression that the law and its agents actually do work and society can function by following the laws instead of having to go around them.
South Korean ships fired warning shots at North Korean ships that came past the United-Nations demarcated western sea border between the two countries, a border that North Korean does not recognize.
And finally, Germans are feeling rather put upon about bailling out the euro and Greece, with arguments that would sound very familiar to any bailout-opposition here in the United States. Using American examples, we have the lack of unity in the Union and how much the individuals hate it and the desire to keep money at home and not be forced to spend it bailing out ventures that have obviously failed, as a small sampling.
Domestically, hey, look at that - once marijuana was legalized, supply increased to meet demand and prices fell, causing the local economy in a particular part of California to crash. We’ve seen this story before - rather interesting to see how some people have built their entire livelihood on certain things staying illegal and having regular raids.
Because of the glut of highly-educated and degree-holding people in the job market, the standard four-year college or university may not be the way to go for everyone these days. Trade school moves faster and still offers the possibility of good paying work. This might be a bit of a swing cycle, going from white collar back to blue collar to drive the economy with. If that’s the case, we’ll get to test the economic theories that say trades and manufacturing are what really drive an economy, not eggheads and wizards.
Senators Kerry and Lieberman introduced a climate change and energy bill into the Senate today, calling for carbon reductions, increased alternatives for power, the ability for states to decide whether or not they want offshore drilling, and trade penalties for other countries if they don’t get up to the same standards.
The new Miss USA has been crowned, and she's Miss Michigan, a Lebanese-American by the name of Rima Fakih. Now, normally I wouldn’t give a rat’s hindquarters about beauty page*record scratch* scholarship opportunities, but I need the one to provide the set-up for the other, namely the accusation that Miss Michigan is secretly a Muslim (as opposed to her public Christianity), funded by Hezbollah through her family and supporters, and intended to be a sleeper agent to spread radical Islam through a pretty face. Apparently, one is not to be deceived by the presence of such an uncovered woman, nor her prominently placed Christian icons, as it’s perfectly okay for Muslims to practice deception on nonbelievers, according to Ms. Schlussel’s reading of the text. In her mad quest to prove Miss Michigan is a terrorist, or at least funded by them, she adds on "confirmation" that at least one terrorist were financing Miss Michigan, as well as a "Racist, 9/11 Truther, Islamic Terrorism Supporting Sponsor" also supporting her, and then, of course, selects the worst of responses and generalizes them as representing the entirety of Dearborn and Muslims who support Miss Michigan. So far, we’re not seeing a whole lot of class or anything that Occam wouldn’t commit homicide over. Once Miss Michigan won, then, following the script to the hilt, she accuses Donald Trump of rigging the contest so that Miss Michigan could win in appeasement to Muslims. Because Donald Effing Trump, of More Money Than Several Minor Gods fame, is going to be afraid of someone attacking his contest because the alleged Muslim didn’t win. Or that he’s secretly a Muslim supporter himself, looking for ways to bend over backward to accomodate radical Islam. This was after Trump pulled the Miss Universe contest out of Dubai because Dubai said no to Miss Israel, we note. But no, this is all propaganda for Trump, and even Barack Obama, to promote how Islam isn’t the bloodthirsty terrorist religion it obviously is. The person who should have won, in her opinion, was Miss Oklahoma, who gave an answer about how she supported Arizona’s Papers Please law (and hoped that she wouldn’t have ended up like Carrie Prejean.) Oh, and the Islamic world is laughing at us because the apparently flamboyantly gay Johnny Weir was a judge in putting a Hezbollah-influenced Muslim girl as the face of Miss USA.
You might almost think she had an agenda. Our congratulations to Rima, and we hope she doesn’t get Prejean’d by people who think only tanned whtie girls should be allowed to be the face of America’s most beautiful women. Actually, I may have to retract that statement. Thanks to Media Matters, we find out it's not an isolated line of thinking - at least one Fox personality thinks the white girl lost because Political Correctness demanded she lose for her opinion and the Arab-American win for her exotic looks and mainlaine liberal opinions. Tempest, teapot, hopefully. Although the comment squad at Media Matters thinking it’s Miss Oklahoma that will receive the good side of the Prejean treatment in exposure and media coverage - and then hopefully will fade neatly into the sunset as Miss Prejean did.
Instead of focusing on that less-than anything stuff, let’s turn our attention to a great example of what Arizona’s Papers Please law will do - by examining the case of one Jessica Colotl, student, pulled over for slowing traffic and now facing deportation, including the sheriff of the county she was arrested in seeking a new warrant because she allegedly lied to him about her address when arrested after ICE released her and deferred her case to complete her studies. Despite the suppposed promise that the county was partnering with ICE specifically to catch dangerous criminals, the numbers say a very different story - about 90 percent of those people arrested and then sent for deportation have never been charged or even associated with dangerous crimes. So, stopped for anything, including the most banal of traffic violations? No papers on you? Off to immigration you go to start your deportation case. That is, if you look like someone that would be here illegally, of course. Or you look like someone that a law enforcement officer thinks would be a dangerous criminal. Even if racial profiling is supposed to be outlawed, I can guess what the grand majority of people are going to look like in those kinds of cases. So for anyone who says “they’re just enforcing what the law already allows them to do”, you may be right, but so are the people who are claiming that only certain races will be targeted, and that it won’t be used primarily to catch actual criminals.
And right before we get into technology, the White house has a video blog as well as their fleet of photographers, viegoraphers, and social media presences. This is a tech-savvy president, and he’s put enough money and brains into his public media outlet to realize that people want to see content that is unmediated by journalists, as well as content that wouldn’t make it to the journalists’ pages. The video blog can show off the “folksy” aspect of the President while the journalists cover the office and the technical, egg-head side. Of course, the journalists feel a bit peeved that they’re being cut out of these kinds of things...
The sciences and technologies department offers us something that almost warrants a sarcastic “Thanks.” - the possibility that having an insecure attachment style might be good for the survival of the species, because people primed to always look for disasters are faster at reacting to them.
From there, though, we peer into the early 1900s as captured by autochrome processes and Albert Kahn, someone who watned to get as much of his world on film as he could. Yes, there's a book of his work, and more pictures at this link.
Oh, speaking of photographs, cloud-watching from space makes for some really cool pictures.
The flash crash that happened on Wall Street a week ago was apparently the result of algorithms being tripped by an error and react-selling before humans could intervene. And thus, we got a glimipse into what could be the next economic crash, through accident or deliberate sabotage. Now the question is whether or not safeguards will be implemented before the thing happens for real.
And welcome to the opinion pages, where all sorts of things appear. Starting on the climate change bill, Mr. Kieschnick says the bill has to be strengthened from its weak, watery, oil-and-gas favoring form or be discarded, while the WSJ calls it a cap-and-trade bill trying to disguise itself, and Mr. Driessen considers it to be more government reaching into your lives and launches into a screed about how global warming isn't real, and the climate bill has no scientific or popular support, will only cause expenses and problems, is funded by environmental groups, and should be stopped, or if passed and it turns out carbon emission reduction doesn’t do anything, those people who passed it should resign. Both of the opposing points say “Why should the U.S. do anything when devloping economies aren’t doing anything? We’re just handicapping ourselves!” Or, perhaps, we can not contribute to the problem and develop technology that we can then sell to those developing economies to help them out, too?
Mr. Cline points out the obvious problems of insisting terror suspects have no right to any of the Constitutional protections except the one that lets them buy guns.
Mr. Graham points out that if Republicans are going to repeal the health-care bill, they'd better have a plan in place that allows employees to control all of their health care dollars however they like, or the continued problems of employer-based health care and insurance nightmares will only continue. Well, that’s the other logical extreme - everyone has individual coverage or chooses what group to buy into (and what’s covered), or the government steps in and provides for everyone, paid with tax dollars. One of those two situations will likely prevail. The question is which one is cheaper and will provide better coverage and care for everyone.
Mr. Stokes finds it funny that the Attorney General will make comment on a law he hasn't read completely, but won't say the words "radical Islam" together in a sentence. So Mr. Stokes doesn’t particualrly care what anyone else thinks or what the facts are, so long as his prefered worldview gets repeated a lot. And he sets a rather low bar for satisfaction with the Attorney General.
Mr. Kuhner claims that Elena Kagan is an ideological destroyer, bent on rubber-stamping the socialist agenda of President Obama, based paradoxically on her lack of judicial experience, published work, her job as Solicitor General, and the way she handled things like military recruitment and plagarism while dean of the Harvard Law School. Oh, and because she thinks hate speech is bad and she might support the Fairness Doctrine, if you look at things just right. Make up your minds, people. either she’s an enigma wraped in a mystery shrouded in a lack of experience, or there’s plenty of things that point to her idoelogical stance and how she will rule on issues, based on her life experience. You cannot have both.
Finally, out of opinions, Mr. Ranson says the United States government should never expect to get more than 20% of its GDP in tax revenues, and should thus plan accordingly to have a government that can survive on that much or less.
And last for tonight, The Geek Alphabet, a blog post in pictures for geeks, young and old. And two French hikers chronicled their trip from North America to South, having picked up a stray cat along the way. Said cat is exceedingly cute, especially in the pictures where he’s curled up and sleeping.
Today is also a declared International Day Against Homophobia and Trasphobia. Still hoping for the day when people are not afraid of other people for insufficient reasons. And hoping for the day where governors veto bills that would give same-sex partners the same rights that married spouses have regarding end-of-life care because Governor Pawlenty thinks that there’s no need to legally insist that same sex partners be able to make advance care decisions - their advance directives are fine. Despite the demonstrated cases where same sex partners have been denied the ability to give end-of-life decisions, or their advance directives have been challenged because the person named is a same-sex partner. We’re also hoping for the day when people don’t claim their religion gives them a free pass to behave badly toward other people. Example: owners of a bed and breakfast who refused to let two men share the same room, despite them having booked it, claiming that her religion allowed her to refuse this service and not be cited under the law for it.
Out in the world today, a robot by the name of I-Fairy become the first robot officiant at a wedding, marrying two persons on a rooftop cafe.
An ex-candidate for president in Mexico has gone missing amid "signs of violence" - it doesn’t seem like Mexico is all that safe of a country if you’re seen as rich or potentially powerful. As opposed to Somalia, where rebels killed 11 parliamentarians and it seems like anyone who doesn’t believe the same way you do could be a target for violence. Or worse, Bangkok, Thailand, where protesters clase with government forces through burning tires and homemade explosives.
The recount of the Iraqi elections confirms that the Sunni party received the most votes and seats, but not enough for an outright majority, which means it’s time for coalition-building, and that might keep Nouri al-Malaki in power through an alliance with other Shi’ite parties.
Half of the Russian populace belives bribing officials is a normal and everyday part of life, pointing out the difficulty of President Medvedev’s campaign to reform Russia into a law-abiding country. Two sides to that coin - stopping the corruption, and leaving the impression that the law and its agents actually do work and society can function by following the laws instead of having to go around them.
South Korean ships fired warning shots at North Korean ships that came past the United-Nations demarcated western sea border between the two countries, a border that North Korean does not recognize.
And finally, Germans are feeling rather put upon about bailling out the euro and Greece, with arguments that would sound very familiar to any bailout-opposition here in the United States. Using American examples, we have the lack of unity in the Union and how much the individuals hate it and the desire to keep money at home and not be forced to spend it bailing out ventures that have obviously failed, as a small sampling.
Domestically, hey, look at that - once marijuana was legalized, supply increased to meet demand and prices fell, causing the local economy in a particular part of California to crash. We’ve seen this story before - rather interesting to see how some people have built their entire livelihood on certain things staying illegal and having regular raids.
Because of the glut of highly-educated and degree-holding people in the job market, the standard four-year college or university may not be the way to go for everyone these days. Trade school moves faster and still offers the possibility of good paying work. This might be a bit of a swing cycle, going from white collar back to blue collar to drive the economy with. If that’s the case, we’ll get to test the economic theories that say trades and manufacturing are what really drive an economy, not eggheads and wizards.
Senators Kerry and Lieberman introduced a climate change and energy bill into the Senate today, calling for carbon reductions, increased alternatives for power, the ability for states to decide whether or not they want offshore drilling, and trade penalties for other countries if they don’t get up to the same standards.
The new Miss USA has been crowned, and she's Miss Michigan, a Lebanese-American by the name of Rima Fakih. Now, normally I wouldn’t give a rat’s hindquarters about beauty page*record scratch* scholarship opportunities, but I need the one to provide the set-up for the other, namely the accusation that Miss Michigan is secretly a Muslim (as opposed to her public Christianity), funded by Hezbollah through her family and supporters, and intended to be a sleeper agent to spread radical Islam through a pretty face. Apparently, one is not to be deceived by the presence of such an uncovered woman, nor her prominently placed Christian icons, as it’s perfectly okay for Muslims to practice deception on nonbelievers, according to Ms. Schlussel’s reading of the text. In her mad quest to prove Miss Michigan is a terrorist, or at least funded by them, she adds on "confirmation" that at least one terrorist were financing Miss Michigan, as well as a "Racist, 9/11 Truther, Islamic Terrorism Supporting Sponsor" also supporting her, and then, of course, selects the worst of responses and generalizes them as representing the entirety of Dearborn and Muslims who support Miss Michigan. So far, we’re not seeing a whole lot of class or anything that Occam wouldn’t commit homicide over. Once Miss Michigan won, then, following the script to the hilt, she accuses Donald Trump of rigging the contest so that Miss Michigan could win in appeasement to Muslims. Because Donald Effing Trump, of More Money Than Several Minor Gods fame, is going to be afraid of someone attacking his contest because the alleged Muslim didn’t win. Or that he’s secretly a Muslim supporter himself, looking for ways to bend over backward to accomodate radical Islam. This was after Trump pulled the Miss Universe contest out of Dubai because Dubai said no to Miss Israel, we note. But no, this is all propaganda for Trump, and even Barack Obama, to promote how Islam isn’t the bloodthirsty terrorist religion it obviously is. The person who should have won, in her opinion, was Miss Oklahoma, who gave an answer about how she supported Arizona’s Papers Please law (and hoped that she wouldn’t have ended up like Carrie Prejean.) Oh, and the Islamic world is laughing at us because the apparently flamboyantly gay Johnny Weir was a judge in putting a Hezbollah-influenced Muslim girl as the face of Miss USA.
You might almost think she had an agenda. Our congratulations to Rima, and we hope she doesn’t get Prejean’d by people who think only tanned whtie girls should be allowed to be the face of America’s most beautiful women. Actually, I may have to retract that statement. Thanks to Media Matters, we find out it's not an isolated line of thinking - at least one Fox personality thinks the white girl lost because Political Correctness demanded she lose for her opinion and the Arab-American win for her exotic looks and mainlaine liberal opinions. Tempest, teapot, hopefully. Although the comment squad at Media Matters thinking it’s Miss Oklahoma that will receive the good side of the Prejean treatment in exposure and media coverage - and then hopefully will fade neatly into the sunset as Miss Prejean did.
Instead of focusing on that less-than anything stuff, let’s turn our attention to a great example of what Arizona’s Papers Please law will do - by examining the case of one Jessica Colotl, student, pulled over for slowing traffic and now facing deportation, including the sheriff of the county she was arrested in seeking a new warrant because she allegedly lied to him about her address when arrested after ICE released her and deferred her case to complete her studies. Despite the suppposed promise that the county was partnering with ICE specifically to catch dangerous criminals, the numbers say a very different story - about 90 percent of those people arrested and then sent for deportation have never been charged or even associated with dangerous crimes. So, stopped for anything, including the most banal of traffic violations? No papers on you? Off to immigration you go to start your deportation case. That is, if you look like someone that would be here illegally, of course. Or you look like someone that a law enforcement officer thinks would be a dangerous criminal. Even if racial profiling is supposed to be outlawed, I can guess what the grand majority of people are going to look like in those kinds of cases. So for anyone who says “they’re just enforcing what the law already allows them to do”, you may be right, but so are the people who are claiming that only certain races will be targeted, and that it won’t be used primarily to catch actual criminals.
And right before we get into technology, the White house has a video blog as well as their fleet of photographers, viegoraphers, and social media presences. This is a tech-savvy president, and he’s put enough money and brains into his public media outlet to realize that people want to see content that is unmediated by journalists, as well as content that wouldn’t make it to the journalists’ pages. The video blog can show off the “folksy” aspect of the President while the journalists cover the office and the technical, egg-head side. Of course, the journalists feel a bit peeved that they’re being cut out of these kinds of things...
The sciences and technologies department offers us something that almost warrants a sarcastic “Thanks.” - the possibility that having an insecure attachment style might be good for the survival of the species, because people primed to always look for disasters are faster at reacting to them.
From there, though, we peer into the early 1900s as captured by autochrome processes and Albert Kahn, someone who watned to get as much of his world on film as he could. Yes, there's a book of his work, and more pictures at this link.
Oh, speaking of photographs, cloud-watching from space makes for some really cool pictures.
The flash crash that happened on Wall Street a week ago was apparently the result of algorithms being tripped by an error and react-selling before humans could intervene. And thus, we got a glimipse into what could be the next economic crash, through accident or deliberate sabotage. Now the question is whether or not safeguards will be implemented before the thing happens for real.
And welcome to the opinion pages, where all sorts of things appear. Starting on the climate change bill, Mr. Kieschnick says the bill has to be strengthened from its weak, watery, oil-and-gas favoring form or be discarded, while the WSJ calls it a cap-and-trade bill trying to disguise itself, and Mr. Driessen considers it to be more government reaching into your lives and launches into a screed about how global warming isn't real, and the climate bill has no scientific or popular support, will only cause expenses and problems, is funded by environmental groups, and should be stopped, or if passed and it turns out carbon emission reduction doesn’t do anything, those people who passed it should resign. Both of the opposing points say “Why should the U.S. do anything when devloping economies aren’t doing anything? We’re just handicapping ourselves!” Or, perhaps, we can not contribute to the problem and develop technology that we can then sell to those developing economies to help them out, too?
Mr. Cline points out the obvious problems of insisting terror suspects have no right to any of the Constitutional protections except the one that lets them buy guns.
Mr. Graham points out that if Republicans are going to repeal the health-care bill, they'd better have a plan in place that allows employees to control all of their health care dollars however they like, or the continued problems of employer-based health care and insurance nightmares will only continue. Well, that’s the other logical extreme - everyone has individual coverage or chooses what group to buy into (and what’s covered), or the government steps in and provides for everyone, paid with tax dollars. One of those two situations will likely prevail. The question is which one is cheaper and will provide better coverage and care for everyone.
Mr. Stokes finds it funny that the Attorney General will make comment on a law he hasn't read completely, but won't say the words "radical Islam" together in a sentence. So Mr. Stokes doesn’t particualrly care what anyone else thinks or what the facts are, so long as his prefered worldview gets repeated a lot. And he sets a rather low bar for satisfaction with the Attorney General.
Mr. Kuhner claims that Elena Kagan is an ideological destroyer, bent on rubber-stamping the socialist agenda of President Obama, based paradoxically on her lack of judicial experience, published work, her job as Solicitor General, and the way she handled things like military recruitment and plagarism while dean of the Harvard Law School. Oh, and because she thinks hate speech is bad and she might support the Fairness Doctrine, if you look at things just right. Make up your minds, people. either she’s an enigma wraped in a mystery shrouded in a lack of experience, or there’s plenty of things that point to her idoelogical stance and how she will rule on issues, based on her life experience. You cannot have both.
Finally, out of opinions, Mr. Ranson says the United States government should never expect to get more than 20% of its GDP in tax revenues, and should thus plan accordingly to have a government that can survive on that much or less.
And last for tonight, The Geek Alphabet, a blog post in pictures for geeks, young and old. And two French hikers chronicled their trip from North America to South, having picked up a stray cat along the way. Said cat is exceedingly cute, especially in the pictures where he’s curled up and sleeping.
