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silveradeptGreetings, winners, runners-up, showmen, singers, artists, dancers, and people who make the world prettier through your existence. Remember a few postings ago when I talked about the hubris of censorship? How it is the insistence that someone is not smart enough to have an effective filter to screen out noise, or to not take evil messages to heart? Well, here's a perfect example - citing that it could numb other children to the effects of violence, and that it gave her daughter nightmares, a parent has requested the removal of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games for class reading. The challenging parent says that the book should be removed because it doesn't have a moral lesson past "kill all the others and you win." This sounds like a very facile reading, and the parent admits they haven't read the book even as they challenge it. To me, that's a disqualifying offense. Come back when you've actually read the book and file your complaint again. Furthermore, not to be crass and say "never let a crisis go to waste", but clearly there was something in that book that was disturbing and there needs to be discussion about it. If not in class, then at home.
Another consequence of the inability of gay and lesbian people to marry and have their marriages recognized by states and the federal government - the long-time partner and spouse of a gay man, legally married, will be deported because his spouse cannot sponsor him for a marriage visa.
You will go vote in your election on Tuesday, November 2, if you're a resident of the United States. No excuses. For most of you, your employer is required to give you the time to vote, unless your shift allows you to make it to the ballot for a certain amount of time before or after work.
Finally, 29 October is National Cat Day - pick up a fuzzball or a litter from a shelter and/or help to keep them fed, spayed and neutered by donating money and supplies to your local animal rescue. Cats are cute, will irritate you with their ability to get into and knock over everything, but they'll make your life a whole lot more interesting.
In the world today, Iran confirmed that it has been sending foreign aid to Afghanistan, after the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said as much earlier in the week.
Despite the bus being able to carry him, and the route going to where he wanted to go, a man in a motorized wheelchair was not allowed on a particular bus route because it had not been designated as wheelchair-accessible. And no, there aren't other routes headed out where he wanted to go, either. Blargh. Accessible should mean accessible, not "bone thrown to make you shut up."
Domestically, when battling over marijuana, realize that the bans also prevent the usage and growing of hemp in any sort of industrial capacity, and that allowing hemp in by allowing marijuana in could make for a much-needed economic boost.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an earlier ruling and determined that Arizona's requirement to prove citizenship before being allowed to vote is an unfair burden and inconsistent with the National Voter Registration Act. The AG plans to appeal and accused the Ninth Circuit of not caring about the integrity of elections by overturning the ruling. Papers, please.
Technology begins and ends with Barnes and Noble expressly saying that the Nook's updating software is very poorly written - after a user updated his Nook, it had deleted all of his annotations and documents, although he could retrieve the virgin copies of all teh e-books that he purchased. When he called support, they told him it was his fault for not constantly updating the software on the Nook. So not only is their updater software very poorly written, they need better tech support as well.
In opinions, if you want to help fight the terrorists, stop lumping every Muslim in with them. For those people who believe that every Muslim is a terrorist, of course, this will do nothing, but for the sane majority, really, make your distinctions, for Prime's sake.
Mr. Sowell says that tax cuts for the rich work, because lower tax rates encourage capital-owners to take their money out of tax shelters and invest it in the economy. Plus, says he, every president that's cut taxes at the top has had a surge of economic growth, too, that is directly attributable to the tax cuts. the private sector does better with lower taxes, that's a given. That the government gets more in revenue because of lower taxes? That's not a guarantee - they might get less as the new loopholes are exploited to their fullest.
Mr. Krauthammer says the Democrats are being paranoid-bad, concocting a massive conspiracy of foreign and anonymous money funneled through various front groups with the goal in mind of making the people afraid about the economy so that they won't vote rationally for the party that has done them a lot of good over the last two years, when the real truth about why they're doing poorly in the polls is because the American people are center-rightists and will resist anything they see as leftist. A column that deserved a Gargoyle response if there ever was one - you're right, the American people are center-rightist and resist what they perceive to be leftist, but you're wrong in dismissing the lack of disclosure and the attack ads that focus on the economy to the exclusion of almost everything else as needless paranoia. Ms. Angle has dropped all pretense of wanting votes other than the white ones with her latest ads and her tagline that says Harry Reid is not on "your" side. The outsize spending of outside groups resulted in a sequence on television last night where three different anti-incumbent ads all ran sequentially, paid for by three different groups. And a lot of the rhetoric from the conservative side has been about how the stimulus is a failure, the unemployed are still rising, and it's all the Obama administration's fault - excepting, of course, where Republicans continually stalled the extension of unemployment benefits, for example, or demanded the stimulus be smaller than its proponents said the minimum effectiveness would be, and are insisting that all tax cuts, including the ones that help the wealthiest, are necessary instead of agreeing to pass the tax cuts everyone agrees should be extended and then debating the other ones later. Y'know, stuff like that. But if you can just pound into the head of the people that it's their fault you're unemployed, or their fault your insurance is changing, or their fault that you're underwater on your mortgage, you can get them to think with their fear and anger brains instead of their rational brains. Occam says the people are initially resistant, but he also demands that you point out that the conservative side is deliberately stoking that resistance and fear for their own gain.
Mr. Murray suggests the accusations of an elite being formed to rule us all by the Tea Party are correct at their base, and that a new elite is being molded by parents who deliberately choose neighborhoods and schools to give their children the benefits of their high incomes and advanced degrees, which puts these new elites in the bubble of privilege for all of their lives without ever having to encounter the rest of the country. The question for them becomes whether they choose the Eightfold Path when confronted with the four Noble Truths or whether they choose to go back inside their palaces and live out their lives shielded from the rest. Ideology doesn't matter in these elites, as they can turn out on any side of the political compass, but the background for all of them will be remarkably similar. Perhaps as an attempt to combat this from the inside, the Heritage Foundation suggests four immediate changes to the House of Representatives that they believe will be beneficial by taking the power of the government out of the hands of each party's leadership and returning them to the individual members - make the steering committee decide all other committee appointments, remove the leader's ability to influence selection of people to that committee, require term limits for all committee persons, including leadership and Speaker positions, and set a maximum cap on the size of committees so as to prevent them from wielding influence through bloc voting.
Last out of opinions, a well-documented, well-linked series byxenologer on the indefensible things the Catholic Church does and says toward QUILTBAG people, the flagrantly hostile stance the Catholic Church takes toward women, the fact that the Catholic Church is entirely okay with rampant spread of HIV-1 in Africa and elsewhere by being doctrinally opposed to condoms, is also apparently okay with priests raping nuns, oh, and speaking of rape, remember that the Catholic Church also loves and will shelter child rapists. She would like you to stop defending a Church that is openly hostile to you in a way reminiscent of a battered spouse - instead, get help and get out of the abusive relationship.
Last for tonight, wait...that's not a pumpkin!
Another consequence of the inability of gay and lesbian people to marry and have their marriages recognized by states and the federal government - the long-time partner and spouse of a gay man, legally married, will be deported because his spouse cannot sponsor him for a marriage visa.
You will go vote in your election on Tuesday, November 2, if you're a resident of the United States. No excuses. For most of you, your employer is required to give you the time to vote, unless your shift allows you to make it to the ballot for a certain amount of time before or after work.
Finally, 29 October is National Cat Day - pick up a fuzzball or a litter from a shelter and/or help to keep them fed, spayed and neutered by donating money and supplies to your local animal rescue. Cats are cute, will irritate you with their ability to get into and knock over everything, but they'll make your life a whole lot more interesting.
In the world today, Iran confirmed that it has been sending foreign aid to Afghanistan, after the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said as much earlier in the week.
Despite the bus being able to carry him, and the route going to where he wanted to go, a man in a motorized wheelchair was not allowed on a particular bus route because it had not been designated as wheelchair-accessible. And no, there aren't other routes headed out where he wanted to go, either. Blargh. Accessible should mean accessible, not "bone thrown to make you shut up."
Domestically, when battling over marijuana, realize that the bans also prevent the usage and growing of hemp in any sort of industrial capacity, and that allowing hemp in by allowing marijuana in could make for a much-needed economic boost.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an earlier ruling and determined that Arizona's requirement to prove citizenship before being allowed to vote is an unfair burden and inconsistent with the National Voter Registration Act. The AG plans to appeal and accused the Ninth Circuit of not caring about the integrity of elections by overturning the ruling. Papers, please.
Technology begins and ends with Barnes and Noble expressly saying that the Nook's updating software is very poorly written - after a user updated his Nook, it had deleted all of his annotations and documents, although he could retrieve the virgin copies of all teh e-books that he purchased. When he called support, they told him it was his fault for not constantly updating the software on the Nook. So not only is their updater software very poorly written, they need better tech support as well.
In opinions, if you want to help fight the terrorists, stop lumping every Muslim in with them. For those people who believe that every Muslim is a terrorist, of course, this will do nothing, but for the sane majority, really, make your distinctions, for Prime's sake.
Mr. Sowell says that tax cuts for the rich work, because lower tax rates encourage capital-owners to take their money out of tax shelters and invest it in the economy. Plus, says he, every president that's cut taxes at the top has had a surge of economic growth, too, that is directly attributable to the tax cuts. the private sector does better with lower taxes, that's a given. That the government gets more in revenue because of lower taxes? That's not a guarantee - they might get less as the new loopholes are exploited to their fullest.
Mr. Krauthammer says the Democrats are being paranoid-bad, concocting a massive conspiracy of foreign and anonymous money funneled through various front groups with the goal in mind of making the people afraid about the economy so that they won't vote rationally for the party that has done them a lot of good over the last two years, when the real truth about why they're doing poorly in the polls is because the American people are center-rightists and will resist anything they see as leftist. A column that deserved a Gargoyle response if there ever was one - you're right, the American people are center-rightist and resist what they perceive to be leftist, but you're wrong in dismissing the lack of disclosure and the attack ads that focus on the economy to the exclusion of almost everything else as needless paranoia. Ms. Angle has dropped all pretense of wanting votes other than the white ones with her latest ads and her tagline that says Harry Reid is not on "your" side. The outsize spending of outside groups resulted in a sequence on television last night where three different anti-incumbent ads all ran sequentially, paid for by three different groups. And a lot of the rhetoric from the conservative side has been about how the stimulus is a failure, the unemployed are still rising, and it's all the Obama administration's fault - excepting, of course, where Republicans continually stalled the extension of unemployment benefits, for example, or demanded the stimulus be smaller than its proponents said the minimum effectiveness would be, and are insisting that all tax cuts, including the ones that help the wealthiest, are necessary instead of agreeing to pass the tax cuts everyone agrees should be extended and then debating the other ones later. Y'know, stuff like that. But if you can just pound into the head of the people that it's their fault you're unemployed, or their fault your insurance is changing, or their fault that you're underwater on your mortgage, you can get them to think with their fear and anger brains instead of their rational brains. Occam says the people are initially resistant, but he also demands that you point out that the conservative side is deliberately stoking that resistance and fear for their own gain.
Mr. Murray suggests the accusations of an elite being formed to rule us all by the Tea Party are correct at their base, and that a new elite is being molded by parents who deliberately choose neighborhoods and schools to give their children the benefits of their high incomes and advanced degrees, which puts these new elites in the bubble of privilege for all of their lives without ever having to encounter the rest of the country. The question for them becomes whether they choose the Eightfold Path when confronted with the four Noble Truths or whether they choose to go back inside their palaces and live out their lives shielded from the rest. Ideology doesn't matter in these elites, as they can turn out on any side of the political compass, but the background for all of them will be remarkably similar. Perhaps as an attempt to combat this from the inside, the Heritage Foundation suggests four immediate changes to the House of Representatives that they believe will be beneficial by taking the power of the government out of the hands of each party's leadership and returning them to the individual members - make the steering committee decide all other committee appointments, remove the leader's ability to influence selection of people to that committee, require term limits for all committee persons, including leadership and Speaker positions, and set a maximum cap on the size of committees so as to prevent them from wielding influence through bloc voting.
Last out of opinions, a well-documented, well-linked series by
xenologer on the indefensible things the Catholic Church does and says toward QUILTBAG people, the flagrantly hostile stance the Catholic Church takes toward women, the fact that the Catholic Church is entirely okay with rampant spread of HIV-1 in Africa and elsewhere by being doctrinally opposed to condoms, is also apparently okay with priests raping nuns, oh, and speaking of rape, remember that the Catholic Church also loves and will shelter child rapists. She would like you to stop defending a Church that is openly hostile to you in a way reminiscent of a battered spouse - instead, get help and get out of the abusive relationship.Last for tonight, wait...that's not a pumpkin!
no subject
Date: 2010-10-28 05:57 pm (UTC)Thanks for the inclusion.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-28 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-28 08:36 pm (UTC)*snickers*