It is an interesting world, one where conservation of land efforts intentionally displace native people from living on their ancestral lands, which seems rather counterintuitive.

But we also have a selection of the beautiful pictures entered in National Geographic's International Phtography Contest for this year, a little MAD-style folding work on New Moon's male stars, a picture of a crescent Terra from a departing spacecraft, One hundred photographs of one hundred apartments that are exactly one hundred square feet in size, and, of course, the circus of disemboweled plush toys.

On the international stage, heterosexual couple denied civil partnership, because the law only lets homosexuals get civil partnerships. Heterosexuals have to get married. The couple said they didn’t want to get married, though, because marriage discriminates against homosexuals. Hopefully, what follows from his point is the sensible position that “all unions will become civil unions, and marriage is just an additional religious component that people can choose to opt into.”

Just because tensions can’t drop because of harvest festivals, a report indicating Iran has begun war games intended at protecting its nuclear facilities against outside attack.

Domestically, Utah Senator Buttars makes a very specific choice of phrasing when talking about his support for some rights for homosexuals - "But I don't want 'em stuffing it down my throat all the time. Certainly not in my kid's face.". The Senator is okay with nondiscrimination from landlords, but is against letting homosexuals adopt, marry, and has previously called homosexuals a threat to the foundation of American society. This is either another example of a Freudian slip or a deliberate choice of wording intended to stoke the fears of the homophobic populace.

There has to be more to the following story than Fox is reporting. According to their headline, Navy SEALs are being prosecuted for assault charges in realtion to the capture of a terror suspect. Fox is spinning it as “the SEALs gave the dirty rotten terrorist maybe one hit in the gut and now they have assault charges, how absurd is that?” I doubt, somehow, that that’s all there is to it.

Four men in Philadelphia were arraigned on charges they were plotting to support Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group, through the purchase and funneling of weapons.

And last, of course, the approval ratings fall because the President has not made serious progress on any of his key issues, as well as suffering the constant negative rating that an opposition party gives.

Into the opinions, where we start with the Newsweek cover that Sarah Palin thinks is sexist, despite it being her own image provided, and with context of another hyper-gender-role picture of a male politician to show just how similar the two really are. (Scary.) Also, Mr. Taibbi reminds the viewing populace that the media takes a lot of roles upon itself unbidden, and that Sarah Palin is not really different than anyone else the media bosses have decided isn't a serious candidate. It just happens to be that she’s getting it from everywhere.

Returning to matters of The Gay, Star Parker tries to hide it in her critique of Washington D.C., but can't resist claiming that D.C.'s high HIV infection rate is due to homosexual sex, and that the measure to let homosexuals marry would be pouring gasoline on that fire. She also makes false equivalencies that the D.C. people care more about “moral relevance” than in feeding and caring for the children, because D.C. didn’t immediately fall down on their knees and beg for forgiveness when the Catholic diocese threatened to stop supporting social services if D.C. let homosexuals marry. If the city can redistribute the slack left behind to other agencies, then they don’t have to care when someone throws a tantrum about an issue unrelated to the providing for children’s physical welfare. Argue what you like (and Ms. Parker does) abnout the necessity of raising children in your preferred moral environment, but homosexual marriage should have nothing at all to do with either the spread of HIV/AIDS or with social service welfare. Unsafe sex practices are the primary transmitter of HIV/AIDS, regardless of the orientation of the people involved, and the government officially doesn’t give a rat’s ass what religion you are, so long as you adhere to their nondiscrimination guidelines. If you can’t, then you shouldn’t be participating. Start your own social services, if you like, so that you can cater to your preferred clientele and morality, but keep your hands out of the government coffers.

Fruthermore, the Slacktivist on yet another supposed Christian entertaining paranoid fantasies of stormtroopers for The Gay invading churches, despite the clear evil involved in doing so, and how it lets the victimizers beleive they are victims instead.

More on letting batterers feel like they are the battered comes from Ms. Joyce's analysis of how scarily effective "men's rights" groups, those that claim men are as abused as women and that women and feminists have manipulated the system to favor and automatically believe them, have become, mostly because they’ve started dressing in sheep’s clothing. The tactics fo the groups, though, resembles those of the abusers - downplay the numbers, claim the violence is mutual, and leave a threat of more violence hanging if their demands aren’t met.

Polenth, a mushroom, tells us of an experiment in psychology where people fill in gaps in a cultural story with schema from their own culture. Thus, when writing for multicultural audiences, or writing multicultural characters, there should be an editing pass to make sure that your culture hasn’t filled gaps, instead of figuring out how the other culture would actually do something.

Cathy Young looks at the difficulty of making sure warning signs of violence are taken seriously, without descending into a "ban all X" response, the fine line between common sense and overt prejudice, of which Mr. Gerecht thinks we're not even to common sense because we're too afraid of hitting the prejudice line.

Greta Christina expands discussions of religion into a discussion of why all religion is harmful to adherents and to bystanders - no reality check, and in fact, several mechanisms that actively discourage reality checks.

On things requiring different amoutns of belief, The WSJ does not like a bill that would reqrite the authoritiy of the government to let federal agencies provide unlimited amounts of bailout dollars to anyone in an emergency.

Last out, though, Mr. Lomborg suggests a better way to spend money is not on climate change carbon cuts and the like, but in infrastructure that will allow people to withstand the changing climate we have, especially in poor places. He does have a persuasive argument about efficacy. Hopefully, though, that won’t translate into, “Well, we have our domes that can withstand the storm. Why do we need to worry about the carbon amount?”

In technology, science making two good engines out of four bad ones, letting a probe mission continue its journey back to Terra, pictures from a robot exhibition in Japan, the possibility that cigarette smoking near a Mac voids the warranty by creating and exposing it to a biohazard, spherical solar cells, a protoype solar powered device that intends to convert waste carbon dioxide back into fuel hydrocarbons, isolating a mechanism that lets us focus and filter out distractions by tuning our brainwaves to a certain frequency, and a retrospective on hwo science fiction and technology have inspired each other throughout the years.

Last for tonight, unfortunate names, to make you like yours, and a great visual map of the pros and cons of credit versus debit cards, and proof that making vulgar and obscene poetry is not the province of anyone even remotely modern. But any classical cultures student could tell you that just from the graffiti.

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Salutations, persons of great power and influence. It is the thought of catching your eyes for a fleeting moment, either of interest or WTF, that we continue our work.

The closure to a an older story - Fathima Rifqa is sent back to Ohio, as a judge could find no substatiation of the allegations of child abuse and threatened death a Christian church in Florida claimed in refusing to return her. Whether converted or no, the church was unsuccessful in its bid to depict her family as one that would perform some sort of honor killing on her just for thinking about not being Muslim. That said, she is not going back to her family just yet.

Out in the world, mobile phone service in Iraq, both as communication tool and informal banking and payment method, where passing on the numbers of various credit-charged cards is the equivalent of currency transactions. In the United States, unofficial, unlicensed, informal businesses could be as much as $1 trillion in the recession, because informal business is often cheaper to conduct, for various reasons.

Elsewhere in Iraq, the prime minister's re-election campaign is touching on sectarian issues and raising tensions between the major Muslim groups.

Syria and the IAEA stare each other in the eye, with the IAEA considering making accusations that Syria has been engaging in secret nuclear activity.

Domestically, here's what people should mean when they say "Think of the children" - backpack programs where hungry children pick up food backpacks on the weekend to take home with them, returning the backpacks on Monday. Because even in our country, where billions of dollars of profits are recorded daily, children go hungry.

Not that kids are the only place where the wheels appear to be coming off - here's fifteen signs that the society is going through seam-ripping.

Representative Kennedy was asked to refrain from the central part of the Catholic ritual, the Communion, by a bishop of the church because of his continued support for the right to abortion and his criticism of the Catholic Church's stance opposing health care unless yet more restrictions on abortion were included, restrictions that have been put in and passed through the House.

Insurance companies, so recently in the news, might not want to garner negative attention to themselves like revoking the benefit payment of a depressed person based on Facebook photographs that looked like she was having fun. Depression is not a one-shot thing, nor is it necessarily gone if you happen to be having fun at one particular spot in life. Not to mention, she was following doctor's orders, or so she claims. The insurance company claims they would never terminate someone solely on web stuff - and they're probably right - they'd terminate on less than that.

Economic predictions that the unemployment rate will begin to shrink come first quarter 2010, which right now have less than the value of the bits that display them, and even then, they say the shrinkage will be small to start.

After new recommendations that normal healthy women not get mammograms until 50 years, instead of 40, a large amount of ink and hot air has followed. The LA Times attempts a fact checking.

Last out before the opinion line, Governor Mark Sanford, of the Old Appalachian Trail, is facing 37 ethics charges by the state ethics committee.

In the opinions, FiveThirtyEight says, "one e-mail about sexing up data that's a decade old does not a conspiracy make", regardless of how much climate change opposition wants it to be.

Mr. Cline opines about the feasibility and electability of a Palin/Prejean ticket, as well as how useful the two of them are for making it look like women agree with Republicanism (and making the Good Old Boys Party look like it actually cares about women, too.)

Ms. Weiss puts the New York Marathon winner in the category of "immigrant realizes the American Dream through hard work, adaptation, and perseverance, with religion guiding the way" - the ideal view of the conservative, who are more than happy to embrace him in reaction to a comment made about his American-ness. Much like the WSJ is swift to offer reproach to Jesse Jackson regarding his comment about blackness and voting against the health plan, attempting to extend it out to "all liberals still believe that racial politics are the way to go, and will gratuitously use such, while we conservatives have moved past that." Mr. Fund is more conservative in his assessment, talking about the various apologia and noting that not many people have come forward to denounce the remarks.

Mr. Beamer, family of someone lost on 11 September, expresses in lack of confidence in the Attorney General's decision to hold civilian trials for the attack, while conveniently hitting all the opposition talking points about intelligence being handed over, new possible rights, and the big fear, that those on trial might walk.

The WSJ also feels new policy changes at the National Mediation Board have ben rammed through by the Obama appointees without so much as a by-your-leave to debate or dissent, attempting to make it easier for airline workers to unionize. Sounds familiar, although I think it went the other way on other things in the last administration. Still, the truth grain is that if the NMB appointees are trying to influence the results, they're not behaving in a neutral fashion, and thats probably not all that good.

And then there's the health care stuff - The WSJ continues to paint any proposal anywhere as damaging and destructive to health care, this time, focusing on how the plans affect flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts, which they claim liberals hate because it gives the consumer choice and control over their spending, instead of the government. Really? I would have thought such things are there so that people can cover things their insurances won't, or can make their co-pays in pre-tax income. It's not "I have more control", it's "I'm setting aside this money so I can cover the expenses my insurance won't."

More generally, budget and defecit concerns are always on the minds of the editors, now that they've been through a few wars and bailouts, things that they certainly supported for expenditure before opposing things when the new administration came it. Eastasia, Eurasia, potato, potahto. Ms. Strassel makes a mock job posting for someone to get the people to believe again that the Democratic stimulus is working and that another one is necessary, the WSJ thinks there's trickery afoot and that we've been lied to about the risk of the credit default swaps, leading to an apparent bid for unlimited power by Treasury, and for all of this, Messrs. Hensarling and Ryan blame it all on getting away from conservative principles and free-market economics, All Hail The Market.

Last out for tonight, an opinion about the plight of Christians in China and a request that the United States start making normalization talks with Cuba contingent on proving they're improving human rights.

In science and technology, rediscovering a study that tested whether the blind would hallucinate when given LSD, answer, "Kind of. If you had some sight before losing it, you were more likely to hallucinate.", another successful spacewalk, after a bit of a snag in a suit,

Last for tonight, Fox has threatened firings for mistakes happening on air, which then leads to the question of whether some of these things are mistakes or deliberate actions only classed as mistakes after someone calls them out on it.

Oh, and anchor Katie Couric, of Auto-Tune The News and CBS, getting down on the dance floor.

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We're trying to get these out on time, but life continues to intrude. On the plus side, when life does intrude, progress gets made.

Good morning, persons of interest, with all your knowledge and things that make us all enriched by your presence. And you skills that bring us beautiful shots of the Great Wall of China as well as hyperreal sculpture and flowcharts of which major fast food chain one should eat at.

A dubious honor to begin with, as Afghanistan is the world's most dangerous place in the world to be born, according to the UN. (Worst and most dangerous are not the same - someone remind the headline writer.)

And then we get into the worser parts, including what could be the UK's version of the ACTA treaty - a source in the Government suggests the Government will push hard for a provision in an upcoming bill that would give an official power to do whatever they damn well pleased regarding copyright eithout Parliamentary input, oversight, or even the need to get his designs passed through the body. Nothing conrete yet, and it may dematerialize as a threat if sufficient public outcry is registered merely on the rumour.

Elsewhere in the world, the leader of Afghanistan's Taliban escaped to Pakistan and is now being hidden with the aid of Pakistani intelligence, according to the United States intelligence sources quoted. Is this still pushing for expanding a war to a new front?

Domestically, A new visitation on an old trend - the use of Pslam 109:8 as a "ha, ha, get him out of office" to the curretn administrator, whose context is much darker - involving death and widowhood and fatherless children and destruction to his family, too. Could have started as a joke, but it gets worse quick. And we know there are some people out there who will take it seriously. Whether or not they put it into action against someone around them or the President is undetermined. But really, do we want to continue raising the scary rhetoric?

a food bank opened the doors one day to find it had been robbed. Luckily, the community and local businesses replaced what was lost, but whomever did it will have to turn invisible, lest they face the wrath of the community. It's not like a food bank will hoard and not distribute things to those in need.

After the firing of library workers who practiced censorship, the library district has received claims that the graphic novel in question is a threat to public safety, because it encourages predators to act on their fantasies. Seriously, people, we've done that one before. Lolita ring a bell? The library is in the business of representing and carrying a wide range of materials, some of which will be offensive to your sensibilities. Deal, or in the case of "think of the childrens!", PARENT.

Also horrible, a police officer who used a stun gun on a ten year-old child has been suspended - not for the usage, but for not having a camera attached to the weapon, which is akin to putting Al Capone away for tax evasion. Right result, wrong reasons. And worse? The officer was called to the house because the child was throwing a tantrum. Parenting fail results in policeman fail results in big fail for not suspending him for using a stun gun on a ten year-old.

Bigger police fail, though, involves a firsthand account of crowded jails that do not listen to people's medical requests, to the point where someone going in pled guilty just to get otu so they could get prompt and accurate medical care, which can only make the people who go in, who are often sick, only sicker while they stay there. The jail says, "Nonsense. Our statistics show we do just fine, and even with your account, we'd say that person's case was a success." The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics department would like to correct that impression. Possibly with blunt-force clue-instruments.

The Daily Show again proves its superiority by enlisting the aid of professional wrestler Mick Foley to aid a 10 year-old who refuses to say the Pledge of allegiance at school until homosexuals can marry in the United States. There are a lot of options available here, and there should be some serious opportunities for education of the school, including whether or not it is legal to do what he does, what that means, and the bigger issues there, too. Hope the school takes advantage instead of treating the child as a troublemaker and/or suspending him. Recall, too, that Texas may still have outlawed all marriage or marriage-like relations in their zeal to prevent homosexuals from getting married or having marriage-like relationships.

In the arts, Harlequin launched Horizons, a vanity press that is pay to play and doesn't really actually carry any help or weight or name from Harlequin. In response, several writers associations, including the SFWA and the RWA, condemned the practice and the new vanity press, to the point of saying that no Harlequin imprints at all would be considered for any awards. From there? Harlequin said they were removing the Harlequiin name from the vanity press, but they will still continue to promote it. Sufficiently that they will encourage authors to use it if they're rejected from the main imprint. So it's not really a decision to be, y'know, eithical.

On lighter fare, taxation is the name of the game when it comes to paying for health care reform - so natureally people will complain that certain taxes aren't fair, when not copmlaining that taxes exist in the first place.

A retired general testified before a Congressional hearing, claiming the Army lacked any procedure for dealing with violent extremism, and that political correctness prevented a true investigation into Major Hasan that would have caught him before he killed people. If you believe Mr. Henninger, however, the fact that there are website that promote violent Islam, and that peopel can view them under First Amendment protections, is too much, and we should censor those webpages immediately, so as to stop getting "homegrown terrorists". Would that be before or after you criticize other countries for their censorship?

The White House continuees to predict they will be able to convict the alleged planners of the 11 September attacks they sent to federal court. They're probably right, or they would not have likely done so.

Arrests of illegal immigrants at their places of work are down, according to figures released by ICE, which means you may cue up the xenophobia sentiment of "they're taking our jobs!" and other such things that their own slavish devotion to capitalism should tell them is nonsense.

And last out, a federal jusge has rule the Army Corps of Engineers can be held liable for much of the damage wrought in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina on the grounds that they were negligent in the upkeep, maintenance, and strengthening of a system of channels designed to divert the water away from stirking the levees.

Right before the opinions, take a break and admire how a NERF gun becomes a gatling weapon.

In opinions, Mr. Drum tracks a correlation between tuition increases, including the latest UC spike, and corrections spending increases, noting the two track pretty well. Reduce tuition by, perhaps, releasing low-level offenders instead of locking them up? And possibly some other legalizations that would further reduce the prison population? Maaaybe.

Also, HuffPo points out that what you say and what gets pictures taken of you are two very different things - remember that you view through someone else's lens much of the time, even when you read the supposedly unbiased. And nowhere is that more prevalent than in Sarah Palin's book, a memoir of grudge-settling, score-keeping, and all the other petty insults and jibes that she thought to pack into 400 pages.

Mr. du Point believes the people are speaking very loudly about what they want, and the Obama administration is blithely ignoring them in continuing to push for its oh-so-liberal agenda, or rather, the taxes and spending that accompany such. Adding in Mr. Barons's contention that nothing the Obama administration has tried to do has actually been successful, and you have the illusion that the American populace is angry at the President and intends to vote him and his party out of office. Actually, that may not be an illusion, but I would certainly consider it to be some part of a deception based on one's own somewhat jingoistic view of the country.

Last out, Mr. Bowden analyzes what happened with the revolution of 1979 and how the secular government was hijacked by religious zealots, all to claim that the curreny attemtps at revolution in the country are attempting to bring back real and secular democracy, something that we will agree with on the real, but not necessarily on the secular part. We could be wrong, and at what point it becomes demonstrable that we are, then throwing support behind the revolution becomes a good choice of action. Assuming we don' have people who haven't read their Atwood taking seriously the General's satire that all women should be compelled to give childbirth, based on a remark that believes having kids saves someone from breast cancer, through the power of Jeezis.

In the sciences, a reminder that while the ocean can such up a lot of CO2, it has a finite capacity as well, and we're getting close to it, the appearance of Asian carp DNA beyond an electrical barrier intended to keep it out of the Great Lakes, for which there is apparently a poison campaign planned for when the barrier gets shut off for maintenance, suggestion that the Indus Valley civilization invaded and conquered by the Aryan people may have been quite advanced, a browser intended to be able to show how a webpage has changed over time, instead of simply always displaying the latest version, by utilizing a function of the HTTP protocol and having compatible servers that store various date-time stamped versions of their site, more on tiny medibots that can do diagnostics and surgeries in delciate places from the inside, rapid diagnostic chips that are almost as wide as a pencil, and significantly less long and thick, YouTube's decision to turn on automated caption addition to their videos, and HP's ambition to develop a trillions-big sensor network to cover the Earth and act like a central nervous system for the planet.

Last for tonight, a top ten list of the best/worst sex scandal details of the year, with guest commentators and writers, including adult film stars, MSNBC show hosts, and more. And one distrurbic statistic - a recent poll indicates more than a majority - 57 percent - of those who identified as Republicans believe ACORN was responsible for stealing the 2008 presidential election. Is this where I say that the teabaggers have taken over, and the polls now show it?

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Good morning. Will you stay for a bit, please? We've got goodies!

International stuff, go! Former President Carter defending his handling of the Iranian hostage crisis, fearing that he would kill significant numbers of Iranians if he stormed the embassy, which would probably further cememnt the negative opinion and possibly invite retaliations elsewhere.

Afghanis surveyed did not see the Taliban as the enemy, but povery, government corruption, and unemployment as the main causes of war in the country. If there was anywhere that needed a mission to build schools and keep them safe and secure, this is the place.

Domestically, It is not a good idea to propose that mentally incapacitated veterans be guaranteed the right to own firearms. Unless, of course, you want more mentally incapacitated veterans with firearms using those firearms on other people. The first commentator says "Oh, no, it's really just that those declared mentally competent after treatment can get their firearms rights back, and shame on you for not saying so." Nevermind some of the stats that say military bases are not always safe places to live around...

To cast more doubts on health care programs, the government is not really good at sticking to costs, so defecit-neutral promises may be just that - promises. And it may be because stuff happens that wasn't anticipated. People might live longer, for example, so they can take the title of longest-serving Congresscritter. That means mor costs than intended. Or, going against the advice of Mr. White and others to encourage more doctors in advance of health care reform, prices might go up because there's a shortage of qualified personnel that could have been easily avoided.

Ooops. Some jobs saved or created have gone to districts that don't actually exist. At least the currency is strong enough to need reassurances that it won't collapse, right? That's a sign of strength?

In the opinions, Senators in favor fo military comission trials, which are secret, of course. It's all about the "national security" angle and the "terrorists don't deserve a fair and public trial". The columnists chrous on, with Mr. Hanson saying that we're permitting second-guessing of war actions, while also managing to work in his belief that O. J. Simpson was guilty of his alleged crime and his belief that the President is trying to make himself seem exceptional while making the country unexceptional. Mr. Mcgurn says sending KSM to trial undermines the distinction between criminals and terrorists, beleiving the latter to somehow be accorded more rights and protections than even uniformed soldiers in war zones by this trial. Mr. Fund loops back to the angle of "public trials will give terrorists valuable intelligence and information about us, so we clearly can't have public trials".

These arguments rest on the idea that terrorism are war crimes, conducted in violation of Geneva conventions, instead of ideologically-based attacks by one group on another that would normally fall under criminal statutes. The only war enemy I can think of that they want is "Islam", so they can justify otherwise separate acts as somehow having a binding thread and that the separate actors are working in some sort of concert. That is, or they're arguing to give al-Qaeda the same status as they would another nation in terms of referring to it by war conventions. Do they want to give them that kind of recognition? I doubt it, but Mr. Sowell is taking that tack, too, that federal courts are not for terrorists, that intelligence will be given to the enemies of the country, and that our allies will think twice about working with us, because we will disclose the entirety of their help and leave them open for revenge. Well, considering how much they supported the previous administrator's stance on "everything the government does should be hidden under the guise of national security, and the citizens should accept and be enthusiastic about having secrets hidden from them", they're being consistent, at least.

Or maybe it's just the possibility that a jury would find him innocent or that the methods used to collect evidence against him are outlawed and he would walk free. Better to shoot them, or, failing that, convict them where you can rig the trial than to give them a chance, I guess.

On economics, Mr. Wallison is critical of a bill that would give the government power to regulate and to bail out people they thought were too big to fail as a matter of policy, instead of an emergency. We prefer the bill that says we identify what is too big to fail, and then we break it up such that it isn't.

the WSJ is pleased that nothing will come of the Copenhagen energy summit, and are hoping similar nonfunctionality happens here in the country, so that nothing is done about carbon, claiming the economy will recover faster as a benefit of not having to pay energy taxes.

On education, said editors of the WSJ are dismissive of a $100 million USD grant to help education, because the money will be administered and used by teachers' unions, whome they consider to be the biggest impediment to real education reform, preferring charter schools, Teach For America, and employment/pay based on the success of the children to be better things to put money into. (They somehow believe that unions hate testing, because testing exposes bad teachers for what they are and might lead to them losing their jobs. I think they hate people believing simplistic things about fixing education without having to fund it sufficiently.)

In science and technology, putting hacker heads together to build and develop tools to let those in disaster areas get messages out, direct help, and maintain their connectivity even when the standard methods are out, challenging the idea that bigger brains make for bigger intelligence, and studies indicating depression is as deadly as smoking, in terms of helath detriment, so curing the blues, whether through natural or chemical methods, is soemthing worth doing.

Last for tonight, an attempt at joining the ninja club ended in failure and impalement, and a deadpan reading of Neuromancer as part of an interactive exhibit. The big hook, of course, is one of the actors hired to do a part.

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Up top, for those in despair or needing some, the pessimist mug, to remind you perpetually that your glass will always pass the half-empty point. Thus, properly depressed, you can read the UFW call for people to help them in a situation at Ruby Ridge Farms where an owner is alleged to be firing people because they support unionization, as well as threatening to shoot them and engaging in unfair labor practices.

To cheer you up considerably (or at least drown the pain), a team has been contracted to go to Anarctica to try and drill up some bottles of one hundred year-old scotch, hopefully getting enough so that the scotch can be replicated and sold on the market again.

Internationally, Argentina! Now with homosexual marriages!. At least, assuming the judge's order stands.

Despite all the other violence, insecurity, and danger, the mobile phone business in Somalia is doing pretty well. Communications is important, as an essential part of survival in a hostile environment.

An attack in Afghanistan is thought to have targeted a meeting between the Afghans and the French, killing twelve Afghanis nearby. In Iraq, thirteen kidnapped and then executed.

And, of course, when involved in one criminal enterprise, getting involved in another is no trick at all, or: Drug trade and insurgency work well together.

Domestically, slap a big fat FAIL on the New York Fed for abdicating their responsibility as a regulator and instead behaving as a creditor that just gave money without strings or regulations. Further on the economy, the recession has sparked an increase in shoplifting, whether to maintain the illusion of a no longer affordable lifestyle, or because they feel the system is too broken down to make it so they can actually afford or buy the things they're stealing.

Soem persons who received tax breaks may have ot repay the government some money, based on holding more than one job or being in a marriage where both people work. Thus, the tax code and its foibles can snare anyone. Might be worth trying to simplify it some.

On opinions, Mr. Karon praises the President's insistence that new plans for Afghanistan include how the United States will transfer the responsibility of fighting the domestic insurgency to the Afghan government and military.

On the matter of federal trials for terror suspects, Mr. Yoo, author of memoranda that authorized torture of detainees in the custody of the United States, says the trials will force the government to reveal intelligence sources, classified information, and the methods they used, all to the benefit of terror organizations. Huh. From what I heard from the liberal sources, one of the prosecutors remarked that they could still make a guilty case "without all that torture stuff", which suggests to me there's more than enough conventionally-obtained information that requires no classified divulgences to make a go at a conviction. And besides, Mr. Yoo, you have no credibility commenting on this matter, considering your memoranda may have made it harder to obtain a conviction.

Mr. Lomborg suggests the world's priorities are misplaced - concentration on anthropogenic climate change in lieu of food aid and making sure the world does not go hungry is aiming for the wrong goal.

In health care, The WSJ raises the spectre of death panels again, this time against the call for Meidcare to have a global budget, which means bureaucrats decide how much Medicare must spend, without exception, and certainly killing plenty of people in their penny-pinching. Assuming, of course, they don't find myriad new ways to tax the population into paying for the entitlement, instead. Kind of a no-win situation they're painting, either higher taxes or higher deaths. The Republicans hate taxes and the Democrats are not too fond of deaths. Also, Medicare as an income redistribution program? Bullsh*t. Medicare recipients do not receive cash payments, if I recall correctly, so that can't be income redistribution. Complain all you like about the wealthy being taxed, but don't make stuff up.

On the economy, the WSJ is also hoping that Treasury Secretary Geithner will neglect to renew TARP's authorization, considering the money spent so far to have been wasteful and damaging, and that the country would do bettr simply not spending it.

Last out, Mr. Harris, of the Guardian, on the female face of the tea party movement, which is interesting. Bachmann, Palin, Coulter, Malkin - even if it seems like Republicanism is all about being the Old Boys Club, the teabag part has soem very prominent females leading the charge. This is good, in the sense of "hey, women making waves!" and bad in the sense of what they're making waves about, which often seems to include making sure their ability to make waves is severely curtailed, but it might be amusing to think of the teaparty movement as benefiting from a feminist idea, even if it decries feminism every chance it gets. There is much to be unpacked on this, I'm sure...

In tech, Apple files a patent for a process that would force you to view and/or listen to ads periodically to use devices, a move that would likely trash any good will Apple has built over the years, or flop horribly because nobody wants to be subjected to constant ads. It's the SchoolBooks of Little Brother, and we saw how well those worked.

Elsewhere, DARPA thinks freezing brains is the way to go to prevent traumatic injuries from causing significantly more damage, another space shuttle inspection to see if there's damage, considering how damage can cause for an explosive break-up, a battery designed to last for 25 years by running on certain radioisotopes, and men who hook up and shack up with smart women live longer, because those smart women help the men maintain their health, through diet adn through discouragement of stupid and harmful things.

Last out, The word fo the year is "unfriend", apparently, which is more of an antonym of friending, itself a definition in the entry of friend, rather than a real neologism, like "sexting".

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This gets top billing tonight - a great analysis of Choose Your Own Adventure books, in both structure, linearity, and in the endings available - a hypertext before hypertext was. Which kind of explains some of the popularity of gamebooks, before, of course, the games caught up with IF and other manners of making CYOA work on the machine beswt able to handle it.

Internationally, The Washington Times puts out a piece telling us how hard it is for our soldiers to do their jobs because they have to work with the locals. Combined with The Secretary of State saying the only goal in Afghanistan is the rooting out of al-Qaeda, and you might almost think both sides were agitating for a withdrawal of troops. They'll both deny it, of course. And the opinion columns will still hound the President to make a decision, any decision, instead of trying to craft an option that will work.

In further attempts to change bad situations in international relations, The United States has agreed to meet with the leaders of Burma/Myanmar, in what is described as a carrot-and-stick deal, with possible relaxation of sanctions if other conditions are met.

Iran continues their attack against a protest movement, engaging in new Internet restrictions intended to cut off preferred methods of communication amongst the opposition.

Finally, President Obama indicated he would be honored to travel to the two cities that have had nuclear weapons used against them, as part of his desire for a world without nuclear weapons. He will, of course, keep some in reserve because others have them, but he's working with other governments to reduce their stockpiles as well.

Domestic news starts with the Homeland Security secretary saying the United States will grant legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal residents as part of its plan to overhaul immigration. The opposition machine will rev again, this time with cries that the Obama administration plans on letting us be overrun with illegals who will take "our" jobs and then also get health care, something They Don't Deserve. (Despite their newly-legal status.) Odds are undetermined as to whether they weill refer to an industrious hack of cellular technology that provides those looking to safely and illegally cross the border with information about their location and orientation and where nearby sources of water and foot wrappings are. (And furthrmore, I'm pretty sure I heard the person being interviewed give a lecture on electronic civil disobedience...)

The local Catholic church in Washinton, D.C. has said that if the D.C. Council and the Congress make same-sex marriage legal, they will be forced to stop providing social services for the city. The justification? They might have to obey nondiscrimination ordinances and possibly extend benefits to same-sex married couples that work for them. Or, as it was so nicely put, "The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that's really a problem." If it is such a problem, then don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Someone else will take over your funding and services.

Also, a gathering of Teabagger-types found themselves punked by a smooth satire delivered against the evils of European immigrants of the past, luring them in with generic statements before delivering the punchlines that would make someone aware of historical context go "Waaaaaait..." After being exposed, the organizer of the event claims that they knew they were being punked and let him go up anyway...so that he could incite the crowd into shouting things like "Columbus Go Home!" Somehow, saying you were mooning someone does not usually work when caught with your pants down. Points to the satirist for the delivery on that one. According to updates and eyewitness accounts, some of the crowd in attendance did catch on, and then took their anger out on their fellows in the crowd, with the police pushing the punkers back into the angry crowd instead of restraining those attacking them.

In the opinions, why pulling out of Google is revenue suicide, current example: The Wall Street Journal's threat.

Not completely sure what to make of this column about how Han Chinese relate to different racial groups, and how that may affect the visit of President Obama, since it seems to be one part "They're incredible racists toward anyone not them" and one part "the Chinese recognize they're in a global society, so perhaps that attitude will change or be changed by the President".

Mr. Fund believes that Ms. Palin has outsmarted the Beltway elite by not including an index in her book, so those interested in seeing wehther they are there will have to buy it. Or, perhaps, check it out from the library and give it a read. Besides, there should be plenty of organizations already ready to pore over the book so they can then ask the people talked about what their reactions to the accusations are. The people will know in short order, I'm sure.

Mr. Rassmussen says the polls indicate the President would do well to move more toward the right if he wants to keep independent voters, and by that, he means "govern in a more fiscally conservative manner and try to be bipartisan with the party of NO". Or, he could stick to the things that got him elected instead of being sucked into wingnut territory trying to appease voters he probably won't be able to convince. If the Republicans won't follow him, the independents who identify with them probably won't, either.

The difficulty in such "bipartisanship", as Mr. Cline points out, is that what passes for other side of the partisan divide, in all its misogynist glory, is the fringe elements that used to be easily dismissed. Bipartisanship now means working with people who believe women have no role in government and should go back into the kitchen to make pies or into the bedroom to make babies. (And the Stupak amendment is just the most recent example of their desire to continue making a legal medical procedure so difficult to get that it will be de facto outlaweed, especially for the poor.)

The Catholic League said it did nothing wrong in advocating for a more stringent abortion ban in the health care bill, considering any inquiries into whether the group should be stripped of its tax-exempt status for such advcacy to be "harassment". The Democrat in question is asking a rather sane question - did the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops exceed the limits imposed upon them by their tax-exempt status? If so, then the next logical step is to initiate proceedings to strip them of that status, since they chose not to play by the rules.

Elsewhere on health care, Mr. Samuelson claims that health care reform will increase the defecit and spending, something that is a problem in our defecit-racked economy, but then commits a credibility foul of referenceing the Lewin Group study and his point is lost. The Lewin Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of an insurance company, is not a credible resource on matters that will affect insurance companies. Make all the claims you want that the reform will not control spending or that it won't actually achieve what it is intended, but don't cite places that have a vested conflict of interest as your support.

Mr. Lott advocates for abandoning any thought of a gun-free zone, whether on a military base or elsewhere, because he believes that guns in the hands of everyone will stop shootings from becoming multiple-victim shootings, because most to all multiple-victim shootings like this happen in gun-free zones (or so I gather, anyway). I guess we'll need studies asking us whether or not there's an uptick in gun-related violence in places where there are lots of guns. Oh, wait, we have those. They do. While having gun-free zones does mean we might have the problems of occasional large-scale casualties, I'm guessing over time, the small-scale fatalities add up to be more.

On the more specific matter of Major Hasan, Mr. Stokes says the government is falling all over itself to not say what is obvious - that Major Hasan is a terrorist influenced by radical Islam, and that Islam encourages violence, while the Christians and the Christian teachings condemn when someone does violence in the name of that religion. (Excepting when it's against abortion providers, of course - then you get a few mealy-mouthed non-apologies and a lot of cheering from the faction that does those things.)

Last out, because it's only relevant in the big socialism scare hardcore right-wingers are trying to create, CNS's parent organization released a study saying the media whitewashed the evils of communism, by pointing out that a lot of what communism did and aimed for was a good idea, and that it had some successes, even if the execution was severely lacking and resulted in the deaths of millions. But, to CNS, if they weren't stridently against it from the beginning, they were whitewashing it. You're either with us, they say, or with the Communists.

In technology, a claim of engineered hydrocarbon fuels from microbes, C02, and sunlight, which, if borne out and scalable, could make it really easy for us to overcome a foreign oil addiction, the possibility that manipulation of the FOXP2 gene could produce speech-capable primates, and the proposition that sound travels in a bubble rather than a wave.

Last for tonight, because we love numbers, the top 60 Japanese words and phrases for 2009, and 55 epic and totally awesome images.

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The future is upon us, citizens! Thus, we lead with preliminary results from the missile we sent into the moon indicating there is water on Luna. The past still haunts us, though, and thus occasionally, men will have to fight off mountain lions with chainsaws and unnoticed pigeons will cause drivers to put their very expensive cars into corrosive bodies of water.

It is still far too early to be running one’s VEWPRF specials, in print or otherwise, but you can take a gander at how the Nazi Party attempted to secularize Christmas to their own ends and failed, which, if I listen rightly, could somehow find its way to a Fox News segment somewhere about the purported War on Christmas. Recall, after all, that there are some who will see Coraline as a metaphor for liberals, showing their twisted, dark, abortion-and-homosexual-marriage-supporting evil selves.

Elsewhere in existence, a higher-up in the IKEA ranks has written a book alleging the otherwise normal company uses secret tactics, has racist leadership, and pays off activist groups that would otherwise hammer them for various violations...in short, IKEA would be like other multinational corporations, instead of somehow seeming squeakier than them. And if one looks further into the company, one sees a foundation that owns the company, but that doesn't say what it does with the money generated by the company.

Domestically speaking, did you know the RNC covered abortions on insurance since 1991? They're stopping now, of course, to be visibly aligned with their principles, but they used to cover it. And furthermore on conservatives embarrassed, apparently there are more than a few nude photos and recordings of Ms. Prejean, which, if one wanted to believe it, might be seen as the universe indicating what, precisely, it thinks of hypocrites and those who pray on street corners. (Or, the universe expresses its support for homosexual marriage by making a visible critic of such suffer in several sexual ways.)

A billboard expressing a positive message for atheism will be moved after the persons living next to the board received threats of violence and death against them, despite the billboard being on land they do not own. Yet a lot of this country sill doesn’t believe in such a thing as Christian violence like they believe in Islamic terrorism. Wonder what they think of thirteen murder charges brought against the fort Hood shooter, with nary a terrorism charge in sight? Or that Charles Manson still holds great influence, despite his advanced years?

If econonmics and the recession is your interest, you might get lots of life looking at how the jobless rate changes for you depending on your demographic data. If you’re white, your numbers are better. If you’re old, your numbers are better. If you’ve got at least a high school degree, your numbers are significantly better. The highest unemployment rate is black men between 15 and 24 without a high school degree, at 48.5%. There’s your stay in school message. White men aged 25-44 with a college degree are 3.4% unemployed, which could say something about the privileges involved.

And now, for the big thing playing across the airwaves - five suspects in the 11 september attacks will be brought to a federal civilian court in New York to stand trial, instead of going through the secret military comissions panels. Five others will be going to the panels instead of to trials, thoguh, so in one hand, they giveth, in the other, they taketh away. The opposition is already vocally saying that civilian courts are inappropriate, mostly based on the possibility that the accused may be acquitted or otherwise not receive a guilty verdict, based on the procedures done so far to elicit confessions and other evidence.

A former Congressman convicted of taking bribes has been sentenced to thirteen years in jail for his corruption.

In opinions, after spending some time quiet and letting the new administrator do his job, the previous administrator has spoken out against the current administration's policies. I think what was novel about the matter is that the previous administrator waited as long as he did before lodging his critique. The previous administrator does not mention the current administrator by name, but makes it unmistakable as to whom he is talking about.

Mr. Rove, a member of the previous administration, warns of the dangers of making the midterm elections a referendum on the current administration, because he believes such a strategy would backfire for the Democrats, as the increasingly unhappy populace votes them out for not achieving the goals they promised.

Ms. Palin takes her and her book to the airwaves and tours, confirming that she and the McCain campaign did not get along, and that she felt they were stifling her and not letting her play to her full potential. One wonders what that might be, but one also might see it in action if in two years or so, we see Ms. Palin run to be the nominee of the Republican Party (or as a Conservative/Tea Party alternative). Ms. Palin has venom for Ms. Couric and the interview that probably sealed her fate as the ditzy, unprepared candidate image that she couldn’t shake and that Tina Fey captured pretty well.

On health care, Mr. Towery says all the polls are wrong and the public doesn't support the public option, if by “public option” you mean “government controls all of health care”, the meaning conservatives use, instead of “a government-backed option that people can choose instead of private insurance”, which is usually what the pollers ask about to get their favorable ratings. The people do want the public option, it’s just that there are other elements trying to confuse them about what the public option actually entails. Mr. Towery also implies that health care is separate from the economy and the fascination with it is detrimental to said economic recovery. (Uh, not with health care spending being almost one-fifth of GDP, it ain’t.)

Ms. Strassel suggests that Mr. Burris, the replacement appointed for the current administrator's Senate seat, will use his power in the Senate caucus to drive the health care bill leftward, against the forces wanting to pull it to the right.

For an alternative to th eindividual-government binary debate that people erroneously get into, the Slacktivist provides a more nuanced model where there are intermediate levels of support to individuals, and that good government is where those higher-order organizations provide support to the lower-level ones, and then, if needed, step in when the lower-level organizations fail.

We haven’t had a Worst Persons Derby in a while, but I think we've got the stuff for it on this series. Thus, the bronze to Mr. Thomas, who is very tired of diversity, which apparently coddles and accomodates Muslims to the hilt but tells Christians not to show their religious beliefs, lest they be branded as fundamentalists or offensive to everyone else here. This is also in the context of the Fort Hood shooting, and Mr. Thomas impugns that all Muslims follow Sharia all the way to its violent end, if they get the chance to do so. Mr. Thomas might appreciate diversity and the greatness of its practice if he spent some time in a country where he was a minority, and many of the protections that minoirites enjoy here were denied him. As for his (and several others’) contention that Islam is a bloodthirsty religion bent on world domination, I suggest that when he comes to terms with Christianity’s similar aims and history, he can then be allowed to complain about someone else. It is a rather large speck-plank problem, and there was a teaching on how to deal with those.

At the silver level, the aforementioned story teller who thinks that Coraline is a tale of liberals, who have no values and no light in their life and can consequently only tell stories about evil beings meant to scare children. Reading much into that, are we?

Our winner tonight, however, is Mr. Hyman, not for voicing the idea that Barack Obama Hates America, but for his justifications thereof, which read like a list of objections the jingoist has to someone who doesn't believe as firmly as they do that they're right, their friends are right, and everyone else should jump at the chance to be like them, as well as several sections of reading exactly what you want to see into something (the President at Dover Air Force Base was a clear photo-op attempt! Excepting the families decide whether or not to have pictures, and I suspect they decide that before they know who else may be in attendance.)

Last out of the opinions, ddjango says most of what you will find in these "news" roundups is a distraction from the rape and pillaging of the American populace by corporations and the politicians they've bought to retool the country into giving them all the profits and no responsibilities.

In technology, printable electronics possibly one step closer? Also, biodegradeable transistors, cheap devices to take rehabilitation exercises home and continue on, and YouTube in 1080p HD.

Last out for tonight, the usage of a nondefined sound is apparently grounds for paranoia, banning, and disciplinary measures to those students that meep in class. Mee-mee-mememem-me-meep! Meep, by the way, has many versatile definitions. That makes the robocall that told all of a student body they were failing, even though it was only intended to go to those who actually were, tame by comparison.

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Welcome one, welcome all! Many happy birthdays to Sesame Street and all its wonderful moments, consolation to Joss Whedon, whose Dollhouse got the axe after its second season, and kudos to the library system that fired employees who breached the confidential records to determine the age of someone requesting a hold, then deleted their hold from the queue after deciding that the material in question was inappropriate for that user. That, with the interviews, it comes out that the library worker is also a self-appointed censor who was keeping a book checked out indefinitely so no other person could read it and felt the library would be in violation of the obscenity laws is icing on the cake. (There’s probably also some conservative Christianity of the censorious variety going on there, too.) the self-appointed censor did at least go through the challenge process, and was denied, before taking matters into her own hands.

Before getting to the news, some local color from Tacoma about a traveller with impassioned views and a propensity for depantsing himself at City Council meetings. Hail Eris, Hail Discordia, and see if you can spot the Traveller if you’re ever in Tacoma.

Up top, in the international sphere, North Koran and South Korean ships exchanged fire, with the South accusing the North ship of violating its territorial waters, although “not intentionally”, according to those spoken to about the matter.

The tensions of Afghanistan may be shifting, as some insurgent groups distance themselves from the al-Qaeda network and others get closer. The strategy of getting closer may backfire on groups seeking legitimacy and a role in government politics, though. Leah Farrell suggests that al-Qaeda would lose its most potent recruiter if coalition forces were to leave, attributing a sort of master plan to Osama bin Laden to do the 11 September attacks just so the Americans would come over and pound on Afghanistan, giving him fresh recruits for his fight.

Regarding the President, the news appears to be that the PResident will reject options presented to him regarding troop buildups in Afghanistan, in favor of crafting a plan that will talk more about turning control over to the Afghan government and building their native forces.

Xe, nee Blackwater, is alleged to have approved bribes for Iraqi officials to keep them quiet about the various murders and shootings Blackwater conducted in Iraq in 2007. The list keeps piling up. Why is Xe still employed at all by the government?

Not to let himself fall off the news page, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that the United States must choose between ISrael and Iran - inflammatory rhetoric designed to further try and drive a wedge between the U.S. and Israel.

There was also the observance of Armistice Day, Rememberance Day, or Veteran's Day, depending on your locale. We salute those who protect the world’s citizens from those who wish them harm, and redouble our hopes that at some point in our lifetime, they find themselves unemployed for reasons of global peace.

Domestically, members of the fringe, in the wake of the Fort Hood attack, are calling for purges of Muslims from the military and the country. Some others are attacking Greek Orthodox priests because they think they're terrorists, which without this “fear Mediterranean descent” thing going around, probably wouldn’t have happened. The Slacktivist highlights the difference between evangelicals who see the world as saved and unsaved and evangelicals who see the world as the select few and the illegally-immigrating masses, unworthy of the mission the other evangelicals see as their duty. This sort of stew makes for articles like "Oh, look, the Fort Hood shooter was under investigation for terrorism before! Why didn't they catch him?", and having to say, “Because there was no indication he’d do this.” as the answer. “But, his superiors were worried that he was an extremist.” Thing is, they still didn’t see him as a threat. "But he was advocating for Muslims to be released as objectors to avoid these kinds of situations he was planning!" So all religious people should be released in case one of them decides to go out and slaughter people of another religion indiscriminately and outside the bounds of their training?

To add on more insult, a newly partially-declassified intelligence repot continues to reinforce what we already knew - there were no usable WMD in Iraq when the previous administrator decided to invade.

Staying on the military theme, according to Congressman Barney Frank, a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is slated to be part of the Defense Department's funding authorization for next year. That would certainly put some legs on the promise, so far fairly empty, that the President made that he would advocate for bringing homosexuals in from the exclusionary outside they’ve been in for years.

The GOP continues apace, purging away the moderate elements of the party, making Scozzafava not only a scapegoat, but an exemplar for what will come next.

Lou Dobbs has left CNN, and John King fills his spot, giving several anchors one less person to make fun of... for the moment.

Last out before opinions, you can spend a lot of time with the stimulus tracker, seeing just where the money is going to. Aren’t you glad your money is funding projects that claim to save jobs, instead of wars and defense spending that model out to suck jobs away from the economy?

In our dumb criminals file, a drunk driver drunk dialed the 911 service to report the theft of his wallet, some money, and his marijuana, guaranteeing that he would be charged for something when the sheriff arrived.

In the opinions, the reason why passion beats out seeking the pension, or: Why you should ideally be in a job you love, instead of a job that simply makes you money.

Ten years after release, "Fight Club" still has people talking about its messages, even though it got sold as half the movie it was.

Mr. Hawkins is afraid of our collapse because only a few people pay tax, we're all moral degenerates, we're drowning in debt, and we don't have the will to glass other nations if they look to obtain nuclear weapons. Fairly standard conservative worries,

On health care, digby presents a proper proposal for the health care bill - ban erectile dysfunction from receiving federal funds, because it’s very expensive for men to get insurance-paid erections that God clearly doesn’t want them to have. It’ll be a big savings - maybe enough so that women can finally get coverage for abortions, which generally tend to not be as expensive as childhood rearing, especially for those households that can’t afford the children. Not that Congresscritters really understand the plight of the poor, with 237 millionaires currently sitting in the seats of power. And furthermore, persons like Bart Stupak are unapologetic about their continued desire to make abortion impossible, if they can't make it illegal.

More generally, Mr. Stossel calls the House "central planners" of health care and says he's embarrassed that the House is even trying to reform health care, All Hail The Market, The Market Is God, Government Stifles Choice, Rations Care, and Raises Prices. And Mr. Williams says the Congress has yet to display the Constitutional authority to pass health-care bills like this one. I expect Mr. Williams to object to everything Congress does that isn’t an enumerated power from here on out, then, if he wants to be consistent. Otherwise, he’s just picking and choosing to object to things he doesn’t like.

And on the matters of relations with religious groups, Mr. Ajami says that the Muslim world has to "tear down its walls" like the communists did, which gives him plenty of time to sing the praises of the Great Saint Ronald Reagan, Mr. Prager asserts that American Muslims are in denial about their own lunatic fringe, and that denial is the only reason why people haven’t said they know exactly why the Fort Hood shooter did what he did (terrorist, terrorist, Muslim terrorist! Has to be!) Mr. Thomas says the country is being played for suckers by those looking to undermine the country, who are everywhere and succeeding everywhere because Americans won't stand up and kick out or kill all the Muslims, who are all uniformly against America.

Last out, Mr. Sullum says that the shooting at Fort Hood is a clear reason why gun-free zones don't work, because the soldiers would have easily been able to dispatch the shooter, if only they could have had their guns! Guns everywhere will deter criminals from using their guns! Or...not. And, just for kicks, if each of those victims had had guns on them, then how many guns and ammunition would the shooter have had to continue with?

In technology and science, sorry, Mr. Beck, but your name is not immune from someone registering a domain name that might involve you and a satirical situation, a collaboratively-designed zombie shooter, research suggesting dreaming is tuning up the brain circuits in anticipation of consciousness, all the way to the possibility that the conscious system and the dreaming system run concurrently, but consciousness suppresses the dreamer, brief meditation training can help with pain management, which makes sense, because meditation is often about recognizing and dismissing sensations of the body, keep your computer patched and safe, because you might otherwise get a visit from authorities saying you're dealing in kiddie porn, the engineering of rabbit penises from tissue, and a visualization of the beliefs and skepticisms about the 2012 time/date.

Last for tonight, the civics test for a 1954 8th grade student, along with a comment that education has fallen very far down these days, that we do not receive even such rudimentary instruction of the Constitution and several key phrases of the founders to memorize by rote.

Well, that and an old poster that promotes the need to gain weight to be beautiful and a brassiere that doubles as a putting mat and cups.

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Good morning all. Happy 5th Birthday, Firefox!

In the international sphere, McClatchy bets the American President will send 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan. The decision is not going fast enough for some, with Mr. Paulson praising the Great Saint Reagan who was always decisive in his actions (and almost always threw more troops at a problem), and saying the President needs to emulate him and throw as many troops as are needed at the problem so they can always be doing something. (There’s an introductory aside about the Fort Hood shooter that plays up Muslim paranoia, too, but it’s not the focus of the column.)

The IAEA would like to talk to Tehran about supposed testing of advanced nuclear detonation designs, fearing that such a development puts Tehran much farther along the plan to nuclear bombs than previously thought.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez instructed his troops to prepare for war once United States troops obtained access to Colombian military bases, in an attempt to ward of the invasion he feels is coming.

There is some good news - Iraqi lawmakers managed to deal with or sidestep most of the sticking points and pass a bill that will provide for national elections in January.

Domestically, WalMart defends its policies that require employees to take a personal or vacation day before they can take sick leave, even in the middle of the H1N1 pandemic, and that gives people demerits for being sick or taking sick days.

Missing the point in its entirety to make a cheap shot against Islam, an article about the shooter of Fort Hood that apparently places him at the same mosque of the 11 September attackers. Promoting the idea that Islam is a warlike religion that wants to kill everyone, instead of noting a coincidence in a footnote, perhaps in an article about an investigation to see whether that mosque is promoting hateful ideas. Too much to be gained by painting the other as evil, I guess.

Elsewhere on health care, a breakdown of all the House Democratic members who voted against the health care bill, indicating some factors as to why they may have voted against it, like vulnerability of district, Blue Dog status, or a D in a place that is normally pretty R. For the leadership, some advice to the President - start knocking heads together so as to overcome all the stonewalling that is likely to happen in the Senate. Although, depending on your point of view, if the President did throw his support behind a bill, he might be doing more harm than good - at least one doctor thinks the bill is a big slush fund to insurance companies with little bits of real reform tacked on, and instead, we should be focusing on expanding Medicare to cover everyone, making primary care physicians get bigger payments and specialists smaller, and encouraging med students to go into primary care in places where they are most sorely needed. Got to say, that sounds like a nice plan. But the Democrats were never far enough to the Left to actually start there.

Furthermore, the rabid right wing of the Republican Party expressed their outrage and hostility at the lone Republican Congressperson, Joseph Cao of Louisiana, to vote in favor of the House bill, leveling threats of exclusion and dismissing him as not the direction the Republican Party wants to go. Unless, that is, it’s the leadership in Congress, who apparently are fine with Cao’s vote and position. We note, too, that he’s from Louisiana, a state that probably needs affordable health insurance coverage more than most.

In economics, Wall Street bonuses are going to go up 40 percent, which should make a lot of populists howling mad because the economy is nowhere near recovered. The response from Goldman Sachs? "Let them eat cake", in addition to “Jesus endorses self-interest”.

Next verse, same as the worst - the Obama Administration is instructing his lawyers to argue for warrantless wiretaps and unconstitutional searches, while at the same time claiming he’s against those practices. This follows the pattern where Italian courts can convict agents for behaving illegally, while American courts dismiss things that are clearly illegal. Civil libertarians are also very unhappy about the secret ACTA talks that intend on imposing a significantly draconian set of rules regarding copyright,

In the opinions, The Gouverneur Times claims that Bill Owens broke campaign promises the moment he declared support for the House health care bill, promises that he was against cutting benefits or raising taxes and against a public option. They might sound credible, if they didn’t also include clearly untrue things like “the House bill will let illegal immigrants participate in the exchange”.

Ms. McCaughey, of "death panel" fame, posts part of her objections to the House bill. However, with the whopper that she laid down in the first place, what credibility does she have left for the rest? Why is the WSJ printing it, anyway?

Mr. Tanner avoids both of those pitfalls while putting out a column that says the true cost of the House health care bill will be somewhere in the multiple trillions of dollars, assuming planned cuts don't happen and other bills that would add to that cost get passed.

Back on defensible ground, at least, the WSJ says the rising unemployment rate is an appropriate repudiation of the stimulus that happened, so the populace and the Congress should resist calls for another stimulus. Thus, the call comes back after hving been away for a while - All Hail the Private Market, which does everything better than government does.

the new lead laws continue to make problems, says the WSJ and the CPSC, and thus, lots of finger-pointing and not much of getting stuff done.

Mr. Fund claims any commitment to transparency and on-line posting of bills went by the wayside in the newest halth care bill. Guess it was a promise that was too good to be true, especially with time running out on getting the Democratic agenda on its way before the midterm elections.

Last out, from the left, Mr. Krugman fears for us all if the Republican Party continus to become the Teabagger Party, because they might stay just big enough to stop any real work from getting done.

From the right, Bill'O goes cherry-picking the White House visitors list, finding all his favorite liberal targets and...throwing low-level poor-grade insults at them. If that’s what passes for the Bill'O venom these days, I want to know who managed to pull out his fangs.

In technology, a Danish anti-piracy group throws in the towel because of the difficulty of proving that an infringer actually infringed, a voting system that gives voters codes to write that they can then can check to make sure their ballots are accurate and secure, and then supposedly lets independent auditors ensure that votes went to the right places without actually knowing who voted for whom, more research about how real self perceives virtual self, the discovery of an ancient Persian army thoguht lost in a sandstorm around 525 BCE, and Rupert Murdoch says he'll be hiding things behind his paywall from Google searches, believing the people who search and find his results are unimportant. Probably because he’s charging for his content.

Last for tonight, the gender gap of the Otaku - guys like looking at girls, girls like looking at robots.

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Ah, weekends. How we love thee. Ish.

Starting out today, the Parents Television Council, holder of the number one spot for copmlaints to the FCC (last I knew), is up in arms about a teaser advert for a threesome happening in the Gossip Girl drama. Well, they’re at least trying on something that might be salacious. Others think Sesame Street satire has gone too far, and that Oscar saying “Pox News” is trashy is PBS displaying some sort of liberal bias.

Internationally, U2 plays concert honoring the fall of the Berlin wall...with a 6.5 foot wall separating the concertgoers from the rest of the crowd. While we realize there are too many odd juxtapositions in the world to catch them all, surely this one could have been spotted.

In the conflict zones, United States troops express their displeasure at the use of lightly armored vehicles, especially against opposition that utilizes buried IEDs as a common tactic.

Fallout from the conflict zones includes allegation by a former United Kingdom ambassador that the CIA sent people to countries where torture, forced confessions, and violation of their persons with broken glass bottles were all common and expected.

On religious matters, the European Court of Human Rights has determined that the weaing of crucifixes in Italian schools is a violation of religious and educational freedoms, rejecting the idea that the symbol is one of Italian heritage and culture instead of religion. We’re guessing this ruling will be applied equally to all and that no religious symbols will be permitted to be worn in the schooling. Does that include head coverings, too?

Domestically, most of the news cycle will be focusing on a military psychologist killing 12 and injuring more than 30 in a shooting on the base of Fort Hood, a tragedy at best. There will always be something odd or fringey and entirely not true about it, if it looks like it might somehow try to connect the madman with the president.

Rock on, San Francisco, now proud owners of a ban on cat declawing.

On H1N1 matters, The Health and Human Services secretary admitted to overstating the amount of vaccine available and of being improperly skeptic of the claims made by the manufacturers.

More generally on health matters, The House of Representatives says they will have a bill ready for voting on Saturday of this week, a promise they followed through with, despite also including an amendment increasing prohibitions on federal money being used for abortion procedures, due to their ability to limit the time spent on debate and amendments. This continues despite several members of the opposition taking part in a rally intended to make the Congresscritters afraid of the wingnut portion of their population, a population clearly misinformed about what the bill will actually do.

The persons accused of planning and executing the 11 September attacks will receive trials in civilian courts over Republican objections that those attacks were a matter of war instead of crime, and thus military courts, with laxer rules on evidence and transparency, would be better-suited to the suspects.

Lowe's pays out a $29.5 million settlement regarding required but uncompensated hours for their worker and continues to deny they did anything wrong. After this, a worker spots and anti-EFCA poster in their break room. Because unions are evil when they make people pay for overtime work or make employers stop forcing their hirees to do uncompensated labor.

Officially, unemployment back over 10 percent, although if you ask bradhicks, he’ll tell you the number is really either just this side of 20 percent or slightly over, and all those people need to be working instead of having their unemployment benefits extended, thus, the WPA is in order moreso than more unemployment.

On climate, Senator Boxer, committee chair, may utilize rules to allow her to move legislation past the committee, despite the boycott of committee meetings that the opposition party is currently undertaking. Howls of “not bipartisan” ensue, but considering the obstructionist track record so far, rules like this may be the way Democrats get things done.

In opinions, Mr. Reich says the President should sell a bigger stimulus to Congress, based on the argument that bigger stimulus will make for better midterm numbers, as well as continuing to bring the economy back.

The Pandagon people like Mad Men, because it tells it like it was, and make fun of someone who feels uncomfortable and tries to defend the nonexistent idyllic times past, where women were sex-and-cooking appliances and black men stayed out of sight because they knew their place.

The WSJ likes to gather as much happy as it can out of the recent elections, feeling confidence that Republicans are on the ascendancy again and Democrats have to watch out. Mr. Pruden, of the Washington Times, suggests that the President realize that all the problems of the country are his now, and that he should get to fixing them, now unable (in theory) to hide behind the knowledge that this mess was started and exacerbated by the last administration. Against those ideas, Mr. Miniter says some Republicans were not necessarily winners in the last battle, depending on which candidate they backed, as a signal that the purge continues and Republicans will soon be the Conservative Party.

Mr. Gordon says that liberalism has succeeded at the time its current ideology of anticapitalism was needed, and now the liberals need to congratulate themselves and move on, instead of still clinging to a world of sheep, wolves, and shepherds, because the conservatives are changing and evolving into something new. (While they continue to purge people away who don’t fit the hard-right attitude).

Mr Jeffrey says that health care reform plans will turn us into a welfare state, with subsidies for enough people to keep the Democrats in power and fierce taxes and no help for those who make enough to be above that line. All basing itself on the idea that health care and insurance premiums are expensive. So why not reform the insurance premiums and the system there, instead of whinging about a government program that is attempting to do so (even if it will bite the big one)?

Taibbi slams the Goldman Sachs execs for actually saying that Jesus was for greed, profit, and self-interest when he said that we needed to love each other as we do ourselves.

The best thing to do, I would agree, is to forget left and right and focus on doing what is right (with the caveat that the majority is not always right, especially when it wants to act counter to the founding principles of the country.)

Ans we should avoid pontification about how everyone has a point of view in journalism and that accusations of non-objectivity and bias are rendered moot by that, with a little martyr complex thrown in. (“I’m special because I’m counter to them, thus when they say I’m biased, they’re only showing their own biases.”)

The truly worst, however, prefer to attack Holocaust survivors by claiming that Jews are profiting off of the treatment they received during that period, including such gems as “America is a Christian nation, so Jews should shut up”, and “Obama takes his orders from George Soros, who is Jewish.” This was after said survivor took umbrage at a picture comparing the Democratic health care bill with the concentration camps.

In technology, Firefox surpasses IE6 for browser share. Now, here’s hoping IE6 dies in a standards-noncompliant fire. Also, Google unveils the DTN protocol, for interplanetary Internet-type communications, although one would probably not be able to play Quake across worlds with such a thing,

And last out for tonight, velvet paintings of kaiju, including most of the Godzilla cast and Ultraman. Additionally, the letterbox principle works - a camera left at the summit of a climb was returned, as per instructions, after other climbers had taken pictures of themselves at the summit.

Oh, and by the way, did we mention Jesus was born in June?

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It is now the day after an election. Did you all vote? There were some very important questions on your ballot.

A company interested in building hotels...in...spaaaaaace says they're still on schedule for a 2012 opening.

Saudia Arabia upholds a sentence of beheading and crucifixion for a man who raped children and left one out in the desert to die. No argument for punishment for such a crime, but the question continues to be whether the death penalty is a useful and/or necessary thing to have.

The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department would like a word with the studdy authors claiming there is still a strong distrust of America from Canada, considering the way the numbers shake out and the questions asked. Asking whether you think America is doing good in the world is not a question of trust, it's a question of results. To illustrate, a poll that suggests a lot of people would like to permanently relocate to other countries, usually from places perceived as poor to places perceived as rich, like the United States. Ask a different question, get a different result.

Nroth Korea claims to have added to its nuclear arsenal by weaponizing plutonium. This comes as a push to try for some one-on-one talks between North Korea and the United States.



In your war department, questions on how reliable the M-16 and the associated ammunition are, which is easy to digest, and Mr. Greenwald on the Second Circuit's decision to uphold the idea that government oepratives can break even the Constitutino for purposes of national security, and no preson should be able to bring suit or charge against them, so long as they make that claim. Someone smack the Second Circuit with a cluebat - the judiciary is supposed to try these kinds of cases and make rulings about whether government actions are legal.

A Marine Commandant expresses his support of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on the grounds that openly gay people would be disruptive. More on the plight of homosexuals... right below.

In results now currently available, it appears Maine voters rejected the legalization of homosexual marriage in their state by approximately 53 percent of the voters to 47 percent, which makes for another tough slog on the ground for the country founded on "all men are created equal" to actually make it there. Washington State continues to be within the margins of error, but current results indicate that R-71, the "all but marriage" referendum, will be approved, giving registered domestic partnerships all of the rights and responsibilities of heterosexual marriage, just without the name. Pointing out what should be pretty apparent, Melissa McEwan notes that when you ask the majority whether minorities should have the same rights as them, they tend to say no, and that the legislature and the courts are there to give those people a solid cluebatting that their biases should not be written into the law, especially where those biases conflict with the higher ideals of the country.

An Illinois teacher was suspended from his school for allowing his students to read that the animal kingdom does have examples of homosexual relationships. The article itself was apparently one option in several on spotting bias in writers for an AP English course, so it's not like there weren't other things that could be done. The General says the matter should be reversed, as it was clearly an easy way of teaching people to read critically.

In the race in New York Congressional District 23, the Republican who quit endorsed the Democrat, not the Conservative, and it appears the Democrat won the seat.

A new study concludes that if you carry a gun with you, you're more likely to be shot during an assault. Um, yeah. That seems pretty obvious.

And in the economy, Goldman Sachs was betting on the housing market crashing...and neglected to tell anyone it was doing so, which could be a violation of securities laws. For those who think the current administration cares not about defecits, they're aware that things are getting big, and they do want to do work to bring them down. Which could be a matter of wishes and gestures to those who believe they'll just keep spending, even with these gestures. And then there are the proposals that would leave the too big to fails to get bigger and even harder to fail, instead of trustbusting their butts back to a reasonable, not going to cause collapse if they go down size.

And while all this whirls around our heads, people still have to deal with foreclosures and the labyrinth of paperwork that trying to stave it off consumes.

A McDonald's worker called police to cite teenagers who rapped their order at the drive through for disorderly conduct. The teenagers allege they repeated their order more slowly when the worker accused them of holding up the line. That's bush leagues compared to the columnist who said we shouldn't celebrate as much the victory of an American in the NYC Marathon because he wasn't born in America. Perhaps, instead, he should go cover the gentleman who walked a marathon in laps around his block instead.

There is one good thing, though - the judge who refused to marry interracial couples in Louisiana has resigned his position.

In the opinions, the comment squad crows at the decision of a Planned Parenthood chief to follow her conscience and quit the organization after she decided the group was focusing too much on abortions. In Texas, we note, where the pressure of the antiabortion movement is fairly constant and fairly strong. Good for her for resigning her position instead of trying to hold on to it while not really believing in the organization.

A new game that you hop eyou never have to play - Gender Bias Bingo!, where we lay out all the things that work against women in the workplace (and one against men who step outside their traditional gender roles to be a stay-at-home father).

In Iowa, and around the country, there is disillusionment with President Obama, as the person they thought they elected turns out to be someone else. For some, this means an opportunity to attack the President while continuing to hammer Congress, for others, a chance to taunt the grassroots that turned out in force to elect him.

For those more nakedly opposed to the President, they'll focus on why they feel it's such a snub for the President to not attend an anniversary of the Berlin Wall's falling down and try to put it as more proof the President doesn't believe in the jingoistic rah-rah of Fredom and America: Fuck Yeah!

On the other side of the spectrum, Bay Buchanan says the Republican label is becoming irrelevant, and the GOP should tack both to becoming more ideologically pure and finding candidates who appeal to independents and conservative Democrats, while painting all their opponents with the "Obama brush" as being spend-and-spend fringe left liberals. Sounds like she wants to shed the moderates and become pure, while mysteriously being able to find candidates that do not appeal strictly to the fringe. Good luck on that. After all, even Markos himself will tell you that the way to get the base out to vote is to appeal to them, instead of trying to appeal to both the base and the people who don't like you. On that front, the National Republican Senate Committee took their ball and went home, declaring they would not spend money on primary elections, which could mean the fringe elements could make life difficult for other Republican candidates.

The Washington Examiner says that the White House is inflating their jobs created or saved numbers to look good, a trick the Examiner says they learned from unions, who also make nonexistent positions so they can fill their coffers with money.

On health care, the Republican radio address went back to the familiar well - inter-state competition, tort reform, access to large pools for small businesses, and let states do what thy can to make things better. Which will supposedly fix all the problems, because insurance companies, exempted from trust laws, will clearly compete with each other to drive prices down and services up with just those things. Mr. Sowell certainly thinks all we really need is tort reform and to stop practicing defensive medicine, and all will fix itself. Mr. Hunt goes for a better-seeming argument, that we could just get the 14 million too poor to be insured insured at the cost of half of what the House bill is, and that what the bill does is morally wrong as well as poor stewardship (because of abortions. Always abortions), so it should be opposed. He does assume, of course, that our current programs for the elderly and the young are sufficiently funded and effective for the first part. It does sound, though, like he wanted to write a column about how abortion is wrong and government options that would cover abortions are wrong, but wanted to cover it with something else.

Down near the bottom of the barrel, the AFA's director of issues is distraught that the Girl Scouts can't find a place to meet because there are too many sex offenders around, and so he suggests something more permanent be done to them. Because underage sex and public urination clearly require the same sorts of punishments as rape.

Last out, Columnist Dan Savage on why sexy costumes (for adults) for Halloween is a good thing. And then the decisions for parents when their children want to do things outside the gender stereotype - do you let him and possibly expose him to mockery, or do you tell him not to because of that fear? Luckily, this parent recognizes her child had made up his mind, and she decided to go with it.

In technology, an opinion suggesting the doomsday scenarios of corporate-contolled and blocked Internet will never come to pass, so we need no net neutrality laws or regulations, some rather doomsday scenarios about a secret treaty being negotiated that would remake the Internet into a media cabal's wet dream, kicking off alleged file-sharers, requiring stuff be taken down if copyright violation is alleged against it without proof, and forcing ISPs to actively police the content on their sites for potential copyright violations, research indicating culture, rather than genes, is a better predictor and indicator of altriusm, and a reminder that Bill Gates has been anticompetitive for a very long time now.

Last for tonight, foul moods make for clearer thinking and attention, giving up hope on your chronic condition might make you happier, and good moods are great for creativity. So we need both. Otherwise, we'll never come up with Pie Pops.

Oh, okay, one last thing. Carrie Prejean, according to TMZ, will not be continuing to sue the Miss California Pageant after their lawyer showed a homemade sex tape of Miss Prejean. I'm betting somewhere around here, the torrents already have it, and have been distributing it for months. Those wishing to confirm this for themselves, good luck.

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Good morning, people who make us smile. Do you all have your happiness hats attached, and you're not feeling the digging of the spine into your heads? Good, let's begin. Err, after you turn your clock back, that is. And deal with your lead generation scams that never say you're going to pay out at the end of their "free" or in-game currency rewarded test.

The American Library Association and Safeway are teaming up to produce ceral boxes with infoblurbs about libraries on the back. So library usage for the healthy mind, breakfast cereal for the healthy body? I dunno, I think we should be on the backs of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs for maximum expsoure. Well, either that, or we should find the witches who are supposedly hexing all the Halloween candy and ask them to hex the people into coming in and getting a library card or something.

Pakistan suffers another car bombing, confirmed deaths are over 100. A question to those with better historical memory than I - until we were actively involved in regions like these, did we devote nearly as much ink and e-ink to the turmoils of the area?

Afghanistan's first runner up in the most recent elections has dropped out of the runoff in protest over perceived corruption in the upcoming vote.

A presentation to the United Nations suggests that the United States's practice of using unmanned aerial vehicles to attack targets may be in violation of international law against summary executions.

The standoff in Honduras comes to a close with a unity government that will operate until elections in January.

The United Kingdom's chief drug adviser is calling for a re-ranking of drugs, one that would make alcohol more dangerous that cannabis or E.

Finally, The United States will be lifting a travel ban on persons who have HIV/AIDS.

In domestic news, Hey, look! The economy went up! Won't be feeling that for a while, though. What we may be feeling, however, is increased pressure on corporations to stay honest and not look the other way on irregularities or generate irregularities in the first place.

Elsewhere in the economy, The White House also responded to criticism claiming the Cash for Clunkers Program cost the taxpayers $24,000 per car.

Also, The House health care reform bill is currently 1,990 pages. Question is, does it actually create reform? Or will it just cost significant amounts of money without achieving significant ends?

A Florida man is suing on religious discrimination grounds after he was dismissed from Home Depot for wearing a button that said "One Nation Under God", in violation of the company's policy that only corporate-approved buttons may be worn on employee uniforms. Probably why there is a policy like that - to make it very hard for someone to sue they were dismissed under protected grounds.

the Republican candidate for a special election for Congress has ragequit because far too many people were accusing her of not being conservative enough to be a Republican, highlighting just how much power the very conservative faction has in the party right now, and possibly sending a warning to the major parties that they might have to start competing for the people they thought were part of their base.

President Obama did something his predecessor did not - he made a trip to Dover Air Force Base to salute and observe the return of fallen soldiers on their way to their final resting place. For which at least one Cheney criticized him for politicizing the fallen. (And some of the comment squad there thinks it's a cheap photo-op.) The previous administration did meet privately with families of the war dead, however, so if he was trying to ignore the consequences of the war, he didn't completely succeed.

Care and treatment for H1N1 may be so expensive that even the insured run up against the lifetime maximum of their insurance plans, after which the bills continue to mount, without any insurance plan coverage and without any other insurance plan being willing to cover them for their pre-existing condition, no doubt. This makese the bill coming to the floors pretty important, and Mr. Krugman says we should go with what appears, even if it isn't the most perfect thing, and centrists still sitting the fence or even opposing it should take a hard look at why they oppose it and make sure they aren't opposing it for phantom reasons. As the matter is, so long as Americans continue to value destruction of life over prolonging it, health care reform will continue to be an uphill fight.

A Presidential appointment of ambassador to Spain is being held up by Senator Grassley over a tangentially-related matter regarding the firing of a watchdog. There are really two stories in here - one about the use of holding up an appointment to force the administration's hand on something else entirely, which smacks of dirty pool, and the continued references by the Times article to how much money the nominee gave to the Obama campaign, with the implications that this is a bad practice and should be stopped. It would be nice if Senator Grassley would either give a better reason for his hold than the nominee's support of the firing, and that the Times continues to keep its contribution-reward story in the article it wrote.

The Senate Republicans release a list of ten stimulus-funded projects they think are very silly, while ignoring all the serious and useful ones. Furthermore, some of those I can see as having very real scientific use, like the one looking for radioactive rabbit droppings. They'll tell you pretty easily about the levels of contamination in an area.

Finally, the President issued an executive order resotring many of the powers and oversight capabilities of the Intelligence Oversight Board, rolling back weakening changes the previous administrator made.

In the opinions, some interesting thoughts, via Mr. Gorbachev, from Mr. George H.W. Bush, calling the saint of Republicanism, Ronald Reagan, "extreme" and that he was supported by "blockheads". I guess we're seeing more now that the Republicans were a coalition of diverse people coming together than a singly unified idological group. Vanity Fair runs a piece "written" by Levi Johnston showcasing the dysfunction of the Pailn family, and especially the matriarch of that group.

Mr. Jenkins, Jr. starts off with the belief that the government is betting all it can that spending money left and right is what will bring us out of the recession, aligning his distate for both any sort of outrage that bankers are giving the free money they got to pay executive bonuses and for the helath care reform plan that is currently being debated, and suggesting things like raising the retirement age and instituting a flat tax are the things we need. The WSJ takes up the attack on health care, citing a recent WellPoint (an insurance company) study that modeled their own data and concluded (naturally) that insurance premiums would go way up under the Senate Finance bill, and then praise Joe Lieberman for his willingness to defect from the Democratic caucus in support of a filibuster.

Far further out on the fringe, Mr. Sowell offers his opinion that the President is setting out to become a dictator, through the usage of appointed, unelected "czars" that praise dictators, (whom, if it weren't for the Opposition Party Network, would still be stealthily achieving their agenda, unnoticed) the indoctrination of schoolchildren into doing assignments praising the president and into sexual practices that are contrary to the values of what "most" Americans think, and passing big, long bills quickly. (And, of course, all the people the President associated with earlier on in life. He's rewarding them, too.) Then there's the second part, where he accuses the President of making the same mistakes that let Hitler come to power, things like pleasing your enemies by angering your friends, and making America unreliable, the people of letting him do it without strenuous protest.

Last in opinions, Mr. Hawkins details his messages for "elite" Republicans, explaining to them that their base has gone away from them and they must become more teabagger-like if they wish to stay in office, with a focus on staying ideologically pure and parroting whatever it is their base throws at them, without checking first to see if it has brains to it. Then again, considering at 14% of a surveyed populace thought Fox News was mostly liberal, there may not be hope for certain segments of the conservative base.

In technologies, stem cells have been transformed into the precursors to sperm and egg cells, a camera can capture the action of a neuron firing, a computing interface that uses muscle movement in the hands and arms to create gestural interaction, attemtping to build glaciers to replace the ones melting, cultures with collectivist orientations tend away from depression, an iPhone app the purports to translate between spoken Spanish and English, and DARPA wants to test how well people use their networks to solve time-critical problems that are large-scope, by spotting red balloons scattered across the nation. In a two-week timeframe.

Last for tonight, a town-sized illusion of circles

Oh, and one other thing - video games have been doing a lot of pandering to an ubermacho stereotype lately...could we please not do that? There are a freaking boatload of gamers who are not male, and even more who think the idea of machismo and jerkishness is a quick trip to the banninator. After all, we have plenty of exampled of jerkishness, and when laid out and illustrated, they drive the point home even more than the text itself.

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Up top, for those who have children or are interested in the effects marketing has on those who do have children, The Walt Disney Company, who purchased the makers of the Baby Einstein series of videos, are offering refunds for up to four DVDs purchased as part of a settlement for a lawsuit alleging the DVDs did not increase intelligence in babies, as was claimed.

Instead, why not use something like The University of Utah's sliding scale of common objects all the way down to an atom of carbon.

Out in the world today, a Saudi journalist was sentenced to sixty lashes for her part in an episode of a program detailing boasts and frank talk about the sex lives of people in the country. We have great allies, don't we?

Not that the Middle east is the only place where such things happen. In Kenya, a priest blamed the marriage of two homosexual men in London as a failure of women to do their jobs to seduce and capture men for procreation.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed his doubts about the United States' reliability as an ally, over several issues including the kerfuffle about the election fraud</a>. On the United States side of the conflict, some of the members of the military there hope the United States stays on until they feel confident their mission is accomplished. (The article would like you to believe all the troops there want to stay until the mission is finished, but I doubt all of them believe that in their own heads.)

United Nations nuclear inspectors took a tour of the latest "secret" facility in Iran.

The United Nations is scaling back expectations of a climate change treaty, based upon the recalcitrance of several nations toward carbon reductions. For the reasons of refusal from several nations, Investor's Business Daily says the Untied States should refuse, too, so as to not waste money on what they consider to be a sham. Others have more dire warnings about such a treaty, claiming that it will establish a world government that the United States will cede control of itself to, which is a bit on the dire (and tin foil hat) side. Straddling somewhere in the middle is Mr. Stephens, who reviews a book and gives praise to people who think there might be a simple solution to the problem, if you are stupid enough to believe there is one, in his opinion.

Last for this section, the Scientologists took a big fine in France, but the court stopped short of banning them from the country altogether. Of course, since Scientology is rapidly being replaced by Fictionology, soon this will no longer be a problem.

On the domestic side of things, the government's response and distribution of H1N1 vaccinations may be used as a precursor to how the government would run all of health care, for good or for ill, depending on how it turns out. On the writing of bills, critics of the current process say there have been too many closed-door meetings and not enough transparency, including a lot of the promises made by candidate Obama. Now, some of that may be kvetching from a party that seems determined to oppose whatever happens at all costs and is looking for more hooks to display more "secret plots" or other material, but more transparency is good as a general statement.

While we still ahve the don't ask, don't tell policy, the President did sign the Matthew Shepard Act into law, adding gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability onto the list of bias crimes. Good for him, but there's still better to be done.

According to the Senate majority leader, the Senate bill going to the floor will have a public option in it, although it may be an option that states can then choose to opt out of.

The latest possible objection to the health care bills - Does the government have the constitutional authority to require everyone purchase a product or service? Well, we do require insurance to be carried on automobiles and houses, should we decide to purchase them, so one could extend that logic out to requiring someone keep their bodies in good order, since they own them.

There will be a subpoenaing of documents related to the Countrywide financial scandal, including Congresscritters, which the WSJ finds a good thing, but we all should be happy with if the investigation is thorough and spares no person from the eye or the full force of justice if they're found to have engaged in inappropriate action.

The Washington Times believes top donors to the Obama campaign are being rewarded with special sneak peeks and sessions inside the White House, including using the theater and the bowling alley. In response, The White house said most of the people being rewarded has other affiliations with the White House than being donors, many of which were longer-lasting than the contributions.

An investigation is ongoing into the issuance of tickets to non English-speaking drivers, for which the chief of police in Dallas says a federal law requiring commercial drivers to speak English was misapplied.

And last out, the previous administrator has signed on to be a speaker at a series of motivational speaking seminars...which have, in between their star speakers, several high-pressure sales attempts to get people to buy other things they will probably not need, according to the Rachel Maddow show.

In the opinions, Mr. Brooks gives his reasons for the increased opposition to health care reform in polls - it strips choice from the people and gives it to the government (a government already doing too much, they say), makes our innovators and medical professionals less important, so they won't work as hard to develop new drugs and heal people and Americans are people who believe the poor should suffer for being poor, err, people should take responsibility for their actions (as opposed to all those freeloaders who will wait until they are sick to get insurance). As an aside, that poll question referenced? The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department would like a word, possibly on the end of a cluebat, with the question framers about how to avoid bias.

Mr. McGurn fires scattershot at the Obama presidency and its supporters, claiming all they do is blame Mr. Bush for their problems, instead of taking responsibility, but misses at every turn. Statements made by White House staffers and the President are either given hidden meanings or Mr. McGurn believes they are not the truth, despite, for example, the previous administration being significantly hostile to science and stem cell research. Politico aims to turn the tables and ask "What if Bush had done that?" as a way of chastising the media for being clearly in favor of Mr. Obama. Finally, Mr. Phillips says the liberals are the jackbooted thugs seeking to squash all dissent from their views, while conservatives are trying to be civil and play by the rules. Has Mr. Phillips been looking at the teabaggers and others of that ilk? They're certainly not playing civil, and they consider themselves more conservative than conservatives. The spectrum is always in place. If you want to accuse the White House of being further on the left than others, go ahead. But don't try to generalize it outward to say "All liberals are this."

Ms. Zito brandishes poll data saying the populace is not happy with their government, regardless of their political affiliation. True enough. Question now is whether or not that means the election of real change agents, or merely flipping the coin back over to another side.

Mr. Shinn says that the United States needs to committ to the long term in Afghanistan, because insurgent groups will do their best to simply wait out their opponents.

The editors of the WSJ say that the United States should attempt to influence more trade agreements in East Asia, so as to stop China from becoming the power there that dictates trade.

The WSJ is after TARP and hopes that it is closed down as swiftly as possible, because it has become an all-purpose bailout fund, instead of the limited thing it was supposed to be.

Tonight's technology: the first wind turbine ever, in 1941, 15 minutes of sensory deprivation is all you need to induce hallucinations, because the brain abhors a vacuum of stimuli, finding pathways to attack to reverse the cognitive impairment caused b sleep deprivation, meaning college students will be testing those out as much as possible during finals week, circumin found in turmeric may be deadly to cancer cells, so get a taste for some spice to toast your tumors, and an augmented reality system that lets people see as if a wall wasn't there.

Last for tonight, the esteemed Will English IV tells us how Dance Dance Revolution helped him get fit and keep his asthma in check. That, and one unfortunate juxtaposition thanks to the CNN website redesign.

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Morning, all you people of great power. Enjoy stories of giant sharks while you brew your coffee. If you prefer something less frightening, have a look at this notice, where permission is demanded for quoting published work, even in matters of scholarly criticism or evaluation, and with possible fees assessed, depending on adaptation or quotation media, in an attempt to basically discourage any scholar from doing any work on the person(s) in question. If, however, the giant sharks and coffee are not enoguh to get your adrenaline going for the day, try some dark parodies of the Disney Princesses, perhaps reflecting what their natures would be were they part of the Heartless or the Nobodies?

Internationally, however, more people makes for more hungry people, and food people worry the hungry people trend will continue to increase.

Iran condemned five men to death, four of which took part in the election protests of a few months ago, which only raises the world's opinion of the country, no doubt. Messrs. Feith and Weiss continue to demand the Obama Administration do something to officially support the protestors, instead of widening the focus of the Democracy fund and denying requests from organizations interested in democracy in Iran. While they remind us that there are still protests going on, we remind them that as far as we know, the election of one candidate or another would probably be more akin to the rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic, for as much fundamental change it would do. If/when the opposition starts to indicate they'd rather install a different governmental system, then we can start thinking about getting involved.

The Taliban of Afghanistan is threatening citizens away from voting in a runoff election, which seems to be fairly standard fare. Of course, in a place like Afghanistan, they can probably make decent on those threats, which is a bad thing.

Clases in Jerusalem around the holy site between Israeli police and protesters, which still confirms that people will spill a lot of blood around supposedly consecrated and sacred sites. To whom, I guess, is the next question. (And then that bit in the Torah about the being represented by the Tetragrammaton liking blood sacrifices and demanding them...)

And, of course, Iraq had a big bombing with more than 150 dead, continuing to throw doubts on whether or not the Iraqi security forces will be able to handle themselves if/when the Americans leave.

Domestically, in Chicago, protests erupt at a conference of bankers, agitating for banks to be about actually serving their customers, instead of screwing them for profit. Like certain other industries. What's scarier is that if the people snap and go on a rampage, in some places, the Army gets called out, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, thus setting up the perception that the Army is at the call of the corporations, even if the intent was to be good-natured and help the police. The worst part of that article, though, is the systematic way in which the corporate oligarchs destroy towns in Alabama and make essential city services too expensive to afford.

Bath and Body Works is being sued for a manager allegedly terminating a worker for being a Wiccan after the worker took vacation days to celebrate Samhain. The boss allegedly called the worker a devil-worshiper before dismissing her, thus prompting the discrimination claim. Elsewhere with the religious tint, a slew of anti-abortion merchandise may be available on eBay to raise funds for the legal defense of the person charged with killing Dr. George Tiller.

More accusations about L. Ron Hubbard's creation, this time of leaders abusing subordinates nonconsensually.

Switching from religion to race, a new hotel owner laid down some rules - no Spanish while in his presence, and some workers must Anglicize their names and pronunciations so that the guests don't have to think about how it is done. Some workers were fired for what he called insubordination and laying down slurs against him. From the article, though, it seems like a light went on, either that, or his denial and defense mechanisms kciked in, as he was claiming that he had no racist intent.

Because of the success of the Cash for Clunkers program, junk yards are requesting more time to do proper destruction of the vehicles turned in.

In opinions, isn't it very difficult to claim you're not promoting hate while selling Klan merchandise?

A Freeper says "Health Care? No! The Baucus Bill is a secret plot to discriminate against gun owners!", and it passed without actually having been written!

Mr. Baker asks a sensible and sane question - why aren't AIG's contracts more like the UAW's? What is it about the bankrupted financial institution that mandates it still pay big bonuses out to top executives?

A BoingBoing reader opines that if we privatize the Intarwebs and let them not become neutral, we risk National Security problems by letting private enterprise determine which packets are important.

Mr. Neubauer believes that if Barack Obama continues on his path unchecked, the nation of the United States will become a nation of wimps, slaves that must live on the dole provided by the government, and will thus never oppose them for fear of having their life lines cut off. Dr. Devine exhorts the old conservative coalition to reform, to set aside their differences to bring themselves back to power, and then rule toward the ends that the social conservatives want, using the methods the libertarians favor. That may be difficult, though, if darling former governor Palin's trend of endorsing candidates not picked by the Republican Party takes off and continues, drawing in more notable names to rally behind non-R candidates.

Mr. Lakely feels the Obama administration is continually insulting Great Britain, one of our staunchest allies, and that this disrespectful behavior must stop, or, "We owe the UK lots because they stuck with us through the last few years, so they should have instant access to the President."

The very bottom of the barrel comes from Mr. O'Reilly, who suggests that he be hired as Chief of staff, so that he and the President can unquestioningly send more troops to Afghanistan, declare a truce against Fox News, advise his advisers to not mention left-leaning people like Mao, and then drop the public option and push being able to purchase insurance across state lines and reform medical malpractice lawsuits. After all of that gets done, he says, things will be fantastic and the President will be both popular and able to effectively govern. Because he will have turned into a clone of the previous administrator, a person who had stellar approval ratings across the ideological spectrum. Mr. Krauthammer also wants the war on Fox to stop, because he feels it makes the President look childish, also referencing the "staffer admires Mao" talking point. I also find it interesting how much conservatives like to paint Fox as the sole conservative viewpoint in a sea of superliberal media, the only people raising questions while everyone else is in lockstep with the administration. Must be fun to finally be able to throw those accusations around, instead of having to suffer them. It's not like the message changed, it's just that now they have to say "We're truly fair and balanced" instead of "the President agrees with us."

Technologically, DataSF, a mashup that puts publicly-available data spreads to maps of the city of San Francisco, utililzing Second Life as post-traumatic stress therapy, the Tele Scouter device that aims to provide translation and other visual material directly to the retina (Yes, you may start with the "It's over 9000" material), old, sunken submarines from the World War I era brought back to the surface, and exploring the secrets of a sunken city off the coast of Greece.

Last for tonight, say goodbye to GeoCities accounts, and any data on them.

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Salutations, denizens of the Internets. Enjoy your futuristic freedoms and ability to not have to suffer through inane, almost offensive ads for diet shakes. Well, sort of. Recognize the progress of technology with beer pong kits, available for purchase. If that's foreign to you, instead, be regaled with the tales of IKEA.

If, however, you dream of writing the Great American Novel, or at least something to make you some money, here are some handy reasons why putting anything other than your very driest cover letter might work against your chances of getting published, with handy dating analogues so as to give you a perspective that probably makes a lot more immediate sense. (The writer wrote Benighted, an excellent story of a world where lycanthropy is the normal condition and humans that don't "lune" are rare.)

The librarian gets aggravated at Scholastic, who is pulling Lauren Myracle's Luv Ya Bunches because one of the characters' parents is a homosexual, and because of language such as "geez, crap, sucks, and God". According to Myracle, the language could have been changed (although the character would have become inauthentic, in my opinion, if she had), but the parents were non-negotiable. We would rather see, in fact, religious stories that have the proper illustrations for the sex and violence in them, although perhaps marketed to an audience of age to understand their full impact.

Finally before news, The Dead Pool got Soupy Sales, and thus we lost a really good comedian. Also, Posthuman Blues blogger and author Mac Tonnies has died. One of my regular sources for material is gone.

Out in the world, politics sometimes means one country is fighting to get a man extradited for supplying weapons, while another country is offering sweetheart deals on oil and military hardware to make sure he doesn't. Additionally, Mr. Karzai admits that he fell short of outright election, and now we get to see whether we do runoffs or power-sharing.

In domestic news, try as they might, or claim unintional-ness in their speech, the GOP certainly knows how to invoke a stereotype, this time of a Jewish banker and/or miser. And then, perhaps while the nation is distracted by health care reform, some GOPers want to force the Census to include citizenship status on their count against thte threat of being defunded, so they can be sure to exclude all the illegal immigrants that they think are changing the districting so that liberals can take more seats away from GOP areas. One would think, since it's based on population, they would want all the illegals to get counted.

And if you watch any news or television program these days that deals with politics, you know there's bias somewhere, even in the unbiased news. For example, here are ten spots where the "fair and balanced" tagline of Fox Noise falls over flat. If you want to talk about pigmentation and gender, a comparison of CNN and Fox's respective lineups. Or, if you want to go the simple route, the party out of power always supports the idea of the fourth estate keeping checks on the party in power, regardless of which party is in power. Other forms of preference exist, too - putting Leno across from local news hurts the local affiliates, usually.

A judge has refused to dismiss war crimes charges against Xe, nee Blackwater, but did require the plantiffs to refile their case to meet with new guidelines. The rejection of the argument that contractors can't be held responsible for what they do overseas is a black mark on Xe, and we can only hope the case proceeds to trial.

On health care issues, if you take an anti-HIV drug as a precaution because you were raped, you have a pre-existing condition and can be told you's uninsurable for years. Also, if your wife has cancer, you may be forced to enlist in the Army because they're the only people who will cover the cost of treating it.

Further on women's issues, if you call the police to report domestic violence and abuse against you and your child, you can then be evicted from your apartment because "criminal activity" happened there. and then the company might try to get you for early termination of your lease, despite them evicting you.

A company that writes voting systems software has had their source code pried apart and looked at, and it looks like they're in serious violation of the law, and that they may have tried to destroy or render unviewable the data they were giving up.

And the latest from credit companies - charging you a fee for paying your card off, for not charging much to it, and for staying out of debt.

The House Majority Leader took a shot at Republicans who criticize the current Presidnet's handling of Afghanistan by accusing the Republicans of having abandoned it for most of the previous administration on a fool's errand in Iraq.

The White House has said it will deny requests for presidential advisors to testify before Congress on what they have done, which has some transparency advocates up in arms, because of the things that those advisors negotiate or work on that can be critical to the finished product.

In other political material, The Congress passed a bill funding measures to transfer persons from Guantanamo Bay into the United States. Cue another round of "terrorists in your backyard" material?

Another nice segue, sort of: the death penalty is more expensive than life imprisonment in the states that have it, according to a report released.

In today's world, where women earn more than men at times, men often try to make up in other ways what they may lack in income, including trying to make a good sex life and to help keep the house clean. In other words, progress, yo! Although the article wants it to be more of a "Men don't know what their role in the world is, now that women are sometimes the primary breadwinner and away at work for most of the day, and that can affect their sex life if they don't feel like they're properly masculine enough."

Speaking of something supposed to be sexy, Carrie Prejean is being sued by the Miss California agency to pay them back the money she made because of her repeated contract violations.

Some technology that might make it safe to travel and carry water again, instead of being left at the mercies of the TSA and airport water vending.

In your "dumb persons" file, A gentleman pleaded guilty to DWI for driving his motorized recliner chair after having drank eight or nine beers. Also, the circus manager who then stayed within weapons range of a bear that had been trained to skate.

In your "dumb people" file, however, place the retirement community trying to evict a six year old child from the care of her grandparents, because the community rules say all residents must be over 55.

Additionally, the greedy corporations that tried to collect royalties and require a performance license from a shopping clerk who was singing popular tunes as she worked. They have apologized since, but the fact they tried in the first place is pretty stupid.

Hitting our stride in opinions, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about the difference between the NFL's conservatism and Rush Limbaugh and the GOP's conservatism - one will reverse field if their current way stops making money, the other may not reverse even if they get stomped at the polls. More generally, Ta-Nehisi talks about the desire of the unprivileged to "show those motherfuckers", to become better than the privileged who claim they have no problems and are decidedly uninterested in fixing yours.

Andrew Careaga says we need to think of educatino as more about the student and be ready and able to adapt to all the new methods those students want to do their learning with.

Mr. Nordlinger claims liberals are unthinking sheep who impose speech codes, follow authority, and fawn over a president who deliberately and directly insults the opposition, something that the last administrator never did explicitly (Nyeah! So there!)

Messrs. Brady and Kessler point out the quintessential American contradiction - we all want good health care reform for all, but we don't want to have to pay for it in taxes.

Mr. Greenwald points out what should be obvious - if you invade, bomb, sanction, and destroy a country systematically, the natives are going to have a dim view of you, regardless of your "freedoms". Despite that, there's a pretty good percentage of the populace that favors bombing and invading another Muslim nation in the Middle East.

Last out, the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics department looks over the latest Rasmussen numbers and concludes the populace is angry that things aren't getting done, or that the options likely to pass are worse than doing nothing, and that the Republican Party's roots have gone sufficiently away from their elected officials that midterms will be very interesting. They're also looking at data that suggests the stimulus is not as effective at job creation as the Administration had hoped.

In technology, almost one-fifth of the populace publishes or reads status update sites like Twitter, of which the government has bought a stake in companies that monitor such places, retro-futurism form Japan, courtesy of Pink Tentacle, a turbine painted with Osamu Tezuka characters, how plagarism software may have settled a question of authorship on a play written in the 1500s, and the man that makes it his life to break locks, and then post the details of how it's done.

Last for tonight, the Silverdome is for sale. Hopefully they expelled all the Lions' suck from the place before putting it up for auction. That, and a soldier explains that he fought for the premise that all people are created equal, and thus we should live up to that by letting homosexuals marry. For those opposing the matter, one should think about whether one is cherry-picking verses to justify the position.

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In lieu of an actual news post tonight, instead, a fluff piece that tells us more about me than anyone probably wanted to know. So.

The interests meme resurfaced in properly zombie-like fashion, and miyarificus gave me things to talk about. I think many of these are the same as when I last did this some significant time ago.

1000 blank white cards - The quintessential Discordian game. Start with 1,000 blank white cards, draw however many you like into your hand, and then grab a pen and start writing and drawing. Each card has to have an action and a drawing on it to be valid. (Photos may be acceptable substitutes in a pinch). Cards may give points, take away points, or grant abilities and powers, or whatever else you would like them to do. Much like a Whose Line Is It anyway game, the points don't necessarily matter. If you write yourself an "I win!" card, though, expect someone else to write and play a "No, ya don't." The better game is to write the most interesting and fun cards you can, and have those selected as cards to keep for when the next game comes out.

CRFH!!! - College Roomies From Hell!!!. The three exclamation points stand for quality. A long-running webcomic by Maritza Campos chronicling the misadventures of six college roommates starting with a gas leak igniting their entire dormitory complex and going through Misery Journeys, copious alcohol consumption, Killer Cooking, the Satanists next door, all under the watchful eye of one highly overprotective, but highly powerful, parent. Sort of. Been going on for many years now, all the way through the brith of a child and a whole lot more.

Boardieverse - Related to the item above, the Boardieverse is the place where the avatars of the Forums come to life and... watch over the unfolding events of the cast of CRFH!!! The Boardieverse has evolved its own mythology, often involving subtle winks and nods in trying to match what happens in the strip to the mysterious shadowy forces outside it, including the Divine inhabitant of Deck Zero, the Creatrix of the whole thing. Boardieverse is currently in its Third Age, after the Age of Magic resulted in the Incident where the Board got roasted and the Age of Really Big Science-Fiction-y things, which warped in and helped rebuild and produce the orbiting space station keeping an eye on the world below. It's a hybrid age, and each group sort of gracefully fades where needed, to take care of the mundane things like directing operations, while the newbies go out and Do Stuff.

Knights of Jubal - Another comic-derived organization, this time stemming from the comic Clan of the Cats. It'll probably be easier just to quote...

Jubal is a character in the comic strip "Clan of the Cats", by Jamie Robertson. Jubal is in love with Chelsea, the main character of the strip. On two occasions, he has jumped in front of her and taken a bullet in order to save her life.

This caused quite a stir on the message boards, and one particular reader, GoldWolf, raised the question of whether Chivalry has died out or not.

All of the follow-up postings and discussions made two things clear.

1. Chivalry is still valued by people in today's society
2. Despite this, it is dying out.

One of the readers, Silver Adept, suggested an "Order of Jubal". The idea was developed a bit further and, with some artistic help and a good deal of borrowing from myth and legend, the noble Order of Jubal was born.

The Order headquarters at http://ivbalis.com.

Pencil boards - Back when I was just getting into the anime/manga fandom, I found these semiflexible thin plastic objects that were used as backing for paper so as to avoid tearing through it or making marks on the next page, and these are apparently in use in Japan by at least the school-aged. As with anything, they can have any sort of image on them that you want, from popular anime characters to the various parts of kana writing. I still enjoy them and would like to have more of them, but as I am now away from lecture hall, where they were most useful things, I haven't been up to obtaining and using them as much. They'll probably come back into my collecting ways... once I get some money.
Trombone - My instrument of choice. Picked for me at the fifth grade because I had long arms that could work a slide properly. Kept with it ever since and have managed to parlay that skill into marching with a great university marching band (as well as playing pep bands and various other bands), and at least once into a paying gig. My trombone is a very large part of my identity. As money permits, I'll probably find one second-hand and have someone fix it up into good playing condition. So I can then start playing stuff again, somewhere. Possibly paying, again. When I have time, you know.

Wom-Wom Coconut - Also part of a comic, The Egregious Adventures of the Wom Wom Coconut, who we actually haven't seen much of lately, in comparison to Space Durian and Bat Radish. Funny enough, my ability to Feel the Wom came about because of the CRFH!!! interest listed above, which uses a particular tagline - "The Horror. The Funky, Funky Horror." Because funky horror was an interest, if you'll look at the domain name for the comic, you can see where happy circumstances came together.

Mixing with an icons post that ilyena_slyph wanted...



Trombone!kodoma - the default icon, and still one of the best representations of me there is in graphic form. The original was stolen from a section shirt at my university, and it has since been prettified by the fine folks on the CRFH!!! forums. Mixing my love of anime (and Ghibli films in particular) with my instrument of choice, it's me. Would probably need a book floating behind or something to be totally completye, but that makes for busy icon space.



M-Div Logo - Speaking of the CRFH!!! forums, as part of the Boardieverse described above, I'm the chief of the Magitech Division, or M-Div for short, the old remnants of the magic-users who dominated the early age of the Boardieverse, right before the Adversary steamrolled the base we had and left it a ghost town. The logo itself is a fairly recent innovation, after I decided I needed one, for some purpose, probably involving a collaborative fiction somewhere.



Llewellyn himself - Chief Diagonal Pumpkin Non-Hippopotamus Dragony Thingy-Dingy-Flingy Llewellyn the 19th, in the process of dispensing wisdom. Unfortuantely, because of icon space requirements, said wisdom has been cropped. Llewellyn comes from the webcomic Ozy and Millie, which has finished its run but is available still on the web and in print at http://www.ozyandmillie.org.



Dragon Bomb - the sign of the Dragon Illuminati, also from Ozy and Millie. Although, this one has been slightly modified - the original has one horn, I've added another. Perhaps to represent a different faction of the Illuminati, or another division thereof, or perhaps just as yet another conspiracy perpetuated by the Dragons.



Heartless - The sign of the Heartless, Ansem the Wise's creation when he looked into trying to manipulate and learn more about the darkness in people's hearts. The Heartless have become a force to be reckoned with by the time we join Sora in Kingdom Hearts, thanks to the takeover of the computers at Hollow Bastion, and they are mostly commanded by the Disney villains one must fight in the game. Later on, we find the Heartless are one faction in a fight to control the worlds... that's a different icon, though.



Chiriko - Actually created because I was playing the role in a sadly-defunct role-playing game - I thought that playing Chiriko would be a good fit, with both of us being smart kids pressed that way by our peers, although poor Ou has much bigger destiny chips playing than I ever will. For the game and the reboot, I wanted to play him and the game so that it would work a little differently than the canonical story, and I made him a restless dreamer, plagued with images of prophecies that he had to find answers to. It was fun being able to play him as both a wide-eyed innocent klutz, with lots of book learning but very little on how a big city works, and as this child with aamzing brains, when prompted properly.

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Morning. The weekend was a rather fun time. I got to learn a few things about myself, including that I think I have a much better idea of what those of you on my friends list mean when you talk about panic attacks. I'm sorry if you have to suffer those with any regularity. No fun at all.

Out in the world, Pakistan launched a major offensive against the Taliban in the country, hot sauce that could be considered hot enough to have been an attack weapon in a dispute, and a flight attendant who routinely asks her passengers to write a message to a soldier in a war, packaged as part of a care package.

Finally, a Vancouver man was found guilty of negligence when he performed a circumcision on his son, using a razor blade, a bllod coagulant meant for horses, and no ice or other attempt to dull the pain. Because, as he claimed, "Where would the Israelites have found ice?".

In domestic news, there's a reason we need equal rights for all domestic partnerships - because in some places, even with all the right documents, hospital staff will still not let a homosexual see her partner while life is slipping away from her, and won't even tell her or her children when they've moved that partner to the ICU. By the law and the documents aready there, this should not have happened, whether that person was hmosexual or heterosexual.

Police are pursuing possible criminal charges against the parents who perpetuated a hoax involving a hot air conveyance and their young son.

Of more interest, new policy for the Justice department - follow state guidelines regarding medical maijuana usage and don't target those who are compliant. Anyone else in a state that doesn't have those policies or is doing it beyond what the guidelines say, you're still part of the War on (Some) Drugs.

Additionally, the SEC just hired a Goldman Sachs executive as their enforcement head, firmly cementing the idea that not only are wolves expected to watch the sheep, they're going to get paid for it and be able to collude with other wolves for maximum profit. Meanwhile, foreclosure continues to drive more and more former homeowners into homeless shelters.

Federal agencies are commissioning some studies on whether certain factors increase the chances of persons and teenagers being shot, like whether teenagers carry guns, drink alcohol, or live in neighborhoods which are rich in one or the other.

States are bringing suit against the Treasury department, claiming it did not make sufficient effort to find the owners and holders of 40-year bonds sold mostly as fundraising for the Second World War, and that the states should be given the money so they can find the owners.

In the opinions, Mr. Heilemann explains that just because you don't see Secretary of State Clinton everywhere doesn't mean she has no influence or power over what goes on.

The Washington Times rails against the Federal Housing Administration, painting them as the new place for people with bad credit to get zero money down, high-risk home loans. Furthermore, Mr. Freeman accuses the Democrats of postponing a committee session so they wouldn't have to vote on whether to subpoena more documents from the Countrywide scandal.

Other economic opinions include Mr. Brooks, who says we should be looking at what the Conservatives in the United Kingdom are doing economicall now because we're going to have to do that soon and Mr. Taibbi's exposition of another Wall Street practice that normally would fleece the middle class, but instead was turned on some of their own because there wasn't anyone in the middle class to cannibalize, things like being able to short sell stocks you don't have and collect on the bet of their demise, often done so masterfully that someone had to have insider information. Good news on Wall Street is not good news for the common person, and furthermore, it's a wonder the mainstream media hasn't picked up and reported on this yet.

Mr. Davis echoes Mr. Netanyahu's critique of the members of the United Nations that stayed and listened to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, implicitly accusing them of being symapthetic to Holocaust denial, and expanding it out to include liberals who are apparently critical of Israel but supportive of Iran. Mr. Bolton condemns the Human Rights Council's action, because they act similarly anti-Israel, who didn't act at all out of proportion when they engaged in a protracted war with Hamas last year, and that the U.S. should immediately withdraw and defund the HRC before they start becoming anti-Washington.

Mr. Kasparov says Russia doesn't care if Iran goes nuclear so long as they keep buying oil at a favorable price.

Mr. Steyn cherry-picks quotes to paint the liberal world as having to make up stuff that Rush Limbaugh never said to create outrage, but matter-of-factly lets people who adore Mao (the mass murderer Mao, of course) and Hitler talk about their admiration without a peep. Because, of course, one cannot find a philosophy useful or inspiring without then also expressing wholehearted support for what that philospher did with his life. If you think the Chairman's ideas are worth spreading, you must also always be in support of his decision to kill millions. Black and white, no grey, always heroes and terrorists, nothing else. Now, while the quote itself may be inaccurate, all that eneds to be done is to replace it with an accurate one, like the Donovan McNabb one, and the point is still made. Mr. Limbaugh defends himself in a column, also claiming most of what was attributed to him is a lie and that the mainstream liberal media is out to get him, despite the "fact" that that same media was fawning all over a black political candidate like he said the NFL was fawning over McNabb's success.

The WSJ contributes an unsigned stating their opposition to the University of Wisconsin, Madison being able to unionize the faculty, most notably, after explaining their opposition to card check and the ability to draw people into the union why may or may not have wanted to be there, based on position classification, saying that if they do, "expect more former free-thinkers to go over to the union mind set." Wait, so if one unionizes, one loses all capacity to think freely? We all become automatons? Really? At least Mr. Berkowitz's opinion that liberal univiersities are choosing to censor rather than applaud free speech tries to provide a solid argument that universities should do things like publish books with potentially offensive descriptions and images in them if it makes scholarly sense to do so, even if his expansion into "Duke assumed the lacrosse players were guilty and brooked no other opinion until they were found not guilty" and "Harvard sacked someone for daring even to offer the idea that women lacked the theoretical intelligence to do natural sciences" aren't as strong.

Still trying to justify extrajudicial proceedings, Mr. Mukasey, previous attorney general declares that the 11 September attacks were a result of trying terror suspects according to the regular justice system, because it would be an undue burden to try terrrorists, terrosrists might attack the courthouse, and even if housed in prison, terrorists could spread their ideals to others and make it all more dangerous, and because trials require discolsure of information, which other terrorists will use to make more attacks. Keeping us safe by keeping us all in the dark. That's not how justice works.

Mr. Gleicher opens the health care volley by saying expert panels are not always the right thing, and people sometimes make bad scientific studies, so soon we'll have all sorts of doctors making bad decisions based on bad data, but nobody will stop it because the expert panel says it's the right thing to do. Messrs. Parante and Bragdon lay out a case on how they think market reforms, including buying policies out of state and repealing requirements like guaranteed issue and community rating, will get more people on insurance and at a lower cost. So long, of course, as those companies don't then cancel them out at the first sign of some sort of sickness. Mr. Champan says a good way to reform costs is to make people who buy insurance know up front that they're going to be paying a chunk of care by themselves as co-pays. Of course, the problem with that is for people whom that money is probably already spent, if never available, are probably the people who need to be in contact with their physicians more.

Last out, Mr. Crovitz shakes his head at the FTC's new disclosure regulations, because of how much they're in the interests of traditional media and against the Internet... which one really couldn't properly police and regulate, anyway. The Web people do their own regulating. peaking of the media, Mr. Taranto posts a glowing profile of Mr. Brietbart and his campaign to turn ACORN from a community-assistance organization into an organization that helps pimps avoid the law, praising him and his attempts to take on the "Democrat-media" complex and embarrass the mainstream media into covering it and the Congresscritters into doing something about it, with the caveat that the way he went about doing it is highly unethical. It was excellent framing of the shot, carefully excluding all the other things ACORN does well and possibly all the other employees who turned them away when they explained what they wanted to do.

Just a little technology - five that could change the game if they turn out to be doable, and catching the placebo effect at work.

Last for tonight, Aldhous Huxley reads Brave New World, available for free.

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Of interest before we begin, your library may have digital materials available so you can download without having to get to your local library branch. If you're in Toronto, the prime minister of Canada just gave $3 million CDN to help with renovations of the library.

Perhaps also of interest are the drunkards driving flaming vans through towns.

The Dead Pool also claimed someone from this generation's geeky childhood, and for adults in a different venture. Captain Lou Albano, best known to me as Mario on the Super Mario Brothers Super Show, passed on to the Mushroom Kingdom.

On this day in history, remember John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, what might be accurately pegged as the beginning of that which would be the Civil War.

Internationally, a deadly attack in Afghansitan may have had forewarning, but according to the U.S. military, warnings like it are commonplace and they could not corroborate the story. Thus, no troop buildup or extra preparations.

Pakistan does not look like a particularly good place to be, either, with increased militant attacks.

And a parental heart-stopping story of letting go of a stroller meant it got hit by a train. The baby inside survived.

Domestically, Maths proficiency in the United States is not improving significantly among fourth or eight grades tested. Well, maths are not exactly being taught as important things, nor are there a whole lot of good maths role models for men or for women. Although we could possibly get some good ones if we enlisted the gent who found a missile launcher in his back yard. Much more fun with parabolic equations when the intent is to blow things up.

Guess what? Your telephone company is acting as spies for the government. At least now they're admitting what's already been known. Luckily, that also menas we can find out what they've been talking about with the federal government.

I expect to see a lot of opinion-writing about earmarks in a defense appropriations bill that apparently steal some $2.6 billion dollars away from troop resupply, fuel, and ammunition into "pet projects" of the Senators, for things like vehicle repair, space surveillance, and health care for servicemembers. (As well as more planes and such.)

Another possible opinion topic would be an apartment complex's decision to ban the flying of flags by their residents, claiming that in a diverse community such as theirs, flying flags of any stripe might be offensive to some of the residents.

The third, which has been the topic of some opinions already, is the dollar's apparent weakening as a reserve currency, losing to the yen and the euro over the last few months. Naturally, places like Bloomberg are predicting dire straits for the dollar, mostly blaming stimulus spending as the reason why.

The GAO says long-term outlooks for the country don't look good, and while CNS's regular comment crowd might blame the current administration for all of it, we note the article posted mentions that costs for health care and pensions are likely to be the worst chompers of GDP, unless they're reformed. So the Do-Nothings are being told even by the GAO that they need to get off their asses and make reforms.

Food prices may be going up some for next year, despite the general opinion being that the economy is pretty bad. That said, food producers are probably not doing too well, either, and subsidies for ethanol and other things are messing with prices some, so price increases aren't too weird, I guess. If, however, you fear the pinch, fifty quick ways to avoid wasting food, usually by transforming it into something else.

What is weird is that the Dow is at 10,000, and unemployment is at 10%, things that shouldn't be together (unless one were to point out that something like this is the natural consequence of capitalism, but that would get one called a socialist).

Furthermore in economics, Social Security benediciaries will be receiving no cost of living increase, for which Mr. Obama proposed sending economic recovery checks and The WSJ accuses him of trying to bribe seniors with this so as to make his health care plan easier to swallow. Plots within plots, apparently.

Some homeowners are getting a rude awakening - their insurance policies are no longer covering them once it is found out their houses have tainted drywall that emits sulfuric fumes and corrodes pipes. Wait, we thought insurance was supposed to protect us in case something like this happened? Or is our homeowner's insurance turning our more like our health insurance?

Here's something to spend some cash on - infrastructure, like the stuff that's falling down around your ears. Stimulus spending was supposed to help with that some, but it seems like there's much more work needed.

Last out before opinions, a very long series of "Meet the Nuts", starting with Congressional Republicans accusing the Council on American-Islamic Relations of attempting to plant spies posing as Congressional interns...like any other lobbying organization does, but they're Muslims, so they must be terrorists!

From there, the Later-Day Saints leader claiming that after all the LDS meddling in the passage of Proposition 8, the backlash, "coter-intimidation", and persona non grata status they received was akin to the treatment of African-Americans before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Furthermore, a a Baptist church in North Carolina will be holding a chicken dinner along with their book and music burning, with notable authors such as Mother Teresa, Rick Warren, and Billy Graham slated for the pyre, as well as any version of the Christian Foundational Writings that is not their preferred one, the KJV. Furthermore, the church insists that all interpretation decisions and authority rests solely on the minister. You know, that kind of worked when the Catholic Church was really the only game in town and a significant amount of the populace was illiterate in the language of the service and the religion, but these days, people only put trust and authority in the minister as much as the minister confirms whatever they already believe. This church is clearly afraid of the world and its ideas, to say that only the minister can proclaim and that all other influences must be burned.

There's also the judge who will not marry interracial couples because he thinks children of interracial marriages will suffer too much to justify the marriage, including some very classic "I'm not a racist" defenses. We repealed miscegenation laws a very long time ago, and thus, the State doesn't care who's applying, so long as they can legally marry in the state. I cannot decide that I'm only going to serve white people, because I think black people can't learn and trying to help them would only cause them pain, for example.

We stop off at the manager alleged to have reprimanded an employee for calling 911 after someone put a poisonous substance in her drink and she ingested it, saying the public perception of the chain was damaged by the presence of the police. We hope the person reprimanding her, if the allegations are true, finds out how much damage to his or her own career that remark brought on - by not having a job.

Then there's the bizarre car campaign that made someone feel like they were being stalked by someone who meant to do them harm, with their permission to be pranked apparently obtained through the use of a "personality test" that had quite the opt-in legalese associated with it.

A Utah man missed the brith of his child because he attempted to grope the nurse who was attending and was arrested for it.

Megan McCain posted a picture of herself with some ample cleavage and an Andy Warhol book, describing what her nights were like these days. She then got called a slut and several other bad words for showing off her chest. She considered dropping Twitter because of the response, but eventually apologized for posting the picture. Megan McCain, meet the part of the conservative movement that hates you and will continually be trying to undermine your attempts to make the Republican party relevant again. You may refer to them as the Anti-Sex League at your whim.

Finally, though, a moment of clarity and good taste - a $20,000 USD fine and a smackdown to the Birhter Queen Orly Taitz for wasting the court't time with the whole birth certificate thing.

Into opinions we go, where Mr. Rombinson rips the President a new one for his drive-by compassion in New Orleans.

Mr. Kyle suggests the Federal Reserve is not evil, but just doing its job and that it has helped us by keeping important institutions from melting down entirely, and that if we want to point fingers, it should be at the President for not doing what he promised and what would get him re-elected by the people that support him - things like health care reform.

The WSJ is predictably against the decision of a group to drop Rush Limbaugh as a backer from their bid to buy the St. Louis Rams, thinking the NFL needs some courage, instead of bowing to liberal pressure. This is the same Limbaugh, that as a commentator for ESPN, said the NFL was desperately looking to have a black quarterback do well. The WSJ says, "Well, NBC lets Olbermann do Football Night in America", neglecting to mention that Olbermann was a sportscaster before an opinion host, and says Bill Belicheck should be thankful he hasn't been banned by the Limbaugh standard.

On health care, Ms. Noonan says that Mr. Obama is doing too much of campaigning divisively and not enough of being a smooth and loving governor. I'm guessing she does realize that the opposition has been doing quite a bit to fan the partisan flames, right? And that one should not simply roll over if the opposition makes objectionable noises? Considering, as Mr. Boehlert does, that Fox News has become the Opposition Party to the President, superceding the Republicans in popularity, following, and spin, even in their news coverage, when your opponent is or has major outlets and audiences, you need some of that, too, just so that your message gets heard.

And on the Nobel, two differing opinions - ddjango sees the prize as "Put up or Shut Up", a demand for the President to walk the talk he's very good at, and Messrs. Rotunda and Pham see the Nobel Prize as accepting an award from a foreign government, something not permitted under the Constitution, and thus Mr. Obama would be forced to reject the award and the prize. Excepting that the Nobel Committee isn't actually acting as an agent of a government, but as a group that happens to have non-Americans sitting on its decision committee. So I guess it's not really Constitutionally prohibited after all.

Last out, would someone kindly sodomize the preachers who claim that passing a bill to make crimes against homosexuals based on their homosexuality hate crimes will make it illegal for them to preach their church's undying hatred for homosexuality with a cluebat until they get the... you know what, I guess that wouldn't work. We'll settle for "Would soemone please stop make these people say 'dragon'?" (Or at least the realization that the gate swings both ways and that WASPs are protected if someone attacks them primarily because they are any part of that WASPiness.) The Slacktivist gives it a go, about how many of those preachers saying nonsense like that are consciously lying to their population, despite that they know full well that hate crimes legislation doesn't mean they're being policed for thoughtcrime and it's only if they incite someone to action or do something themselves that hate-crimes legislation kicks in.

In science and technology, a ribbon at the edge of the Sol system?, a camera shot that has both Terra and Jupiter in the same frame, concerns that glacial melt is rereleasing dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere, measurements that may indicate the brain's language center is doing a lot more than previously thought, and broadband has become a fundamental right in Finland, meaning the whole country gets to get wired.

Last for today, Costa Rica is apparently the happiest nation in the world, and some very nice pictures of autumn in the United Kingdom.

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Greetings, denizens of the Future! Astound yourselves and be amazed that a sport magazine is willing to post NSFW pictures of an Ironman Triathlete - the first leg amputee to finish, specifically. And yes, that leg does look good on her.

Also, enjoy that if the Twitter account DrewFromTV makes it to one million followers by 1 January 2010, one million dollars will be donated to the Livestrong charity, as part of an auction for the twitter username drew that Drew Carrey is participating in. If it falls short of the goal, however, the donation will be $1 for every follower achieved at the DrewFromTV account at that time. As of my checking, he had not yet made it to 100,000 dollars.

Also, know well that your satirists have been working to ensure you get the best quality of work. Thus, The Onion provides us with the opinion of many anti-homosexual forces: If God had wanted me to accept homosexuals, he would have created me with the capacity to do so.

Out in the world, a curious application of censorship that creates a situation where newspapers are not permitted to report on who was asking, what question was asked, whom the question was addressed to, and where said question might be found. What they can say is that a question was asked and a Minister will answer it at some point. Needless to say, this makes the free speech advocates pretty pissed off.

United States General McChyrstal is still seking several tens of thousands of new troops for Afghanistan, despite his worries about a corrupted government, one that has admitted to the presence of fraud in their latest presidential elections.

H1N1 could be very costly to businesses, if they don't take appropriate cautions to keep their workpeople mostly infection-free.

Domestically, a double-dosage of health care weird for you all - first, a four month-old denied health care coverage for being obsese, defined as being in the 99th percentile of weight for children his age. Thus, it’s a pre-existing condition, and he can’t get health insurance.

Also, according to Mr. Klein, the firm that produced the raw data for the AHIP's declaration that rates will be increased if reform passes is distancing themselves from the conclusions reached. This on top of things like one White House advisor compared the report to telling us what the world would be like if it were flat, for all the truth that it told and good information it gave.

Beyond those, now that we have all the bills out of committee, let's do some side-by-side analysis of what they will do. Helpful analysis, anyway, instead of the "This is just like Massachusettes and will end the same way!" scaring the WSJ wants to give you.

In the realms of the military, the Pentagon is itching for a big bunker-buster bomb to be done sooner. Furthermore, the military can thank the bad economy for helping them meet recruitment goals for the entirety of last year, the first time this has been done since the military became all-volunteer in 1973.

Fire up your “Zero Tolerance does not work” file and put in this the fact that a first-grader was originally suspended for forty-five days for bringing his favorite camping utensil, which had a knife, to school. His sentence has been reduced - to three to five days. Which is still three to five days too long.

Last before opinions, after crudely altering her photograph as to give her inhuman proportions, and threatening a blog with legal action for posting the image manipulation disaster, the Ralph Laurn company fired the model for an inability to meet the obligations of her contract. Which currently might mean, “Is too big to fit the clothes” (the model’s point of view) or “we think is making our brand look bad, and thus must be dismissed”, or something else. In all cases, the company is still shooting the messenger and continuing to behave like it’s someone else’s fault this happened, even when they took responsibility for the image manipulation.

Starting opinions, the WSJ considers Apple and Nike's resignation from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to be short-sighted, especially with their view that newer carbon taxes and tariffs will also be passed that will catcj up with any benefits the two companies would enjoy now because most of their manufacturing operations are overseas.

Further on economics, Ms. Shelton worries that the dollar will continue to fade out as a reserve currency because the projected spending and defecit increases will put out national debt as being more than our GDP very soon. I still wonder how much of our defecit could be cut if everyone, person and corporation alike, filed completely honest and accurate tax returns. Maybe we wouldn’t have defecits at all, even with the emergency spending plans. Being concerned about the increasing debt and the value of the currency is not a bad thing, but myopic focus saying that spending must be cut, must always be cut, whenever debt rears its head is missing half the point. Revenue increases should go along with debt and defecit reductions. Instead, we usually get a combination of “reduce spending and reduce revenue” - cut taxes and spending, and the private sector will be happy and the economy will grow. And then the private sector will do their best to hide their growth and/or pass any tax costs on to their consumer. Maybe what we need aren’t wage and price controls, but profit controls. For a little while, anyway, in service of paying the debt so that we can reduce taxes at the end. Surely patriotic corporations would be okay with that?

Mr. Holtz-Eakin pans the bill from the Finance Committee as nto actually achieving what it is supposed to while forcing the middle class to pay more, as corporations naturally do what they do best - shirk costs by passing them on to consumers. So premiums go up because of taxes and fees and costs, just like AHIP said they would do. Yet, Mr. Holtz-Eakin makes no mention at all of the four other bills currently in the Congress, which could easily dix all the problems he has with the one. Why is this bill the only one that supposedly exists again?

Mr. Jenkins sees the oncoming technology fight to be one of competition for wireless bandwidth, instead of net neutrality, which the result that has to happen, tiered pricing models based on bandwidth consumption, being the one that will be objected to the most.

Earning herself the Worst Person in the World tonight, Ms. Parker first is against the idea of a consumer financial protection agency, then defends payday loan services as a sector that should be allowed to continue without oversight or regulation, where something as simple as a 28 percent interest cap it too much regulation, based on the fact that almost half of the payday loan operations vanished when their usury was limited.

However, not to end on a bad note, (and to remind us that conservative newspapers may still print more liberal opinions if it suits them), Mr. Frank attacks Republicans holding up an effective labor bureaucrat because she's an effective labor bureaucrat and started programs to encourage employees to report labor law violations, while also damning the previous administrator’s full-speed regression on regulation and investigation into labor practice.

In technology, a new wireless specification that will permit peer-to-peer networks without an access point,

Last for tonight, the humorists are also doing excellent work bringing the Muppets into the 24-hour news cycle.

This, and a stellar graphic showing off all the various missions from Terra to the planets, moons, and further beyond of the Sol star system.

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Braaaains. Braaaaaains. the brains of the digital native are wired very differently that those of the previous generations.

Out in the world today, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu declared there would be no war crimes trials for Israelis involved in last winter's Gaza offensive, taking a hard line against reports from the United Nations. Both Israel and Hamas were targeted as committing war crimes. The United Nations will be discussing occupied Palestine in a special session, so there will be plenty of time to air out any additional grievances earned.

The finances of the Taliban are stronger than those of al-Qaeda, according to a report from the United States Treasury’s assistant secretary for terrorism finance. Starving them of capital would be a much more difficult venture. al-Qaeda, on the other hand, has apparently had its financing disrupted severely.

A firsthand account from a U.N. observer on how the Afghanistan Presidential elections were rigged, identifying problems he insists must be fixed before the country can have free and fair elections. He is one of the persons involved in the growing discontent between two different U.N. sections, each accusing the other of letting the fraud happen.

Last out, Russia resists engaging new sanctions on Iran.

Domestically, Newsweek interviews Maurice Sendak and the people making the film adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are". That should be interesting. Elsewhere in good things, Capt. Sullenberger's book is arriving, telling us about how airlines are putting cost cuts above safety, with passengers none the wiser, as well as other parts about how his own salary, pension, and other compensation was being cut.

On more political matters, Republicans cannot necessarily count on tea party persons to support them in elections, if the tea party activists feel they’re too big-government tax-and spend or they supported any of the current Administrator’s economic decisions. The question becomes whether or not they can successfully elect small-government low-tax persons to office or not.

Mr. Gore returns to the news, with a big climate change panel approaching soon, taking some questions and interviews from supporters and skeptics. Mr. Fund weighs in in support of a skeptic, claiming that his microphone was cut off because he was about to reveal inconvenient truths and facts that dispute Mr. Gore’s movie and thesis, and that Mr. Gore was really just aiming for propaganda instead of truth or real debate.

And in your “Meet an elected Representative, from the Wingnut department”, Representative Louis Gohmert, who rehashed an old argument that letting homosexuals be people too will lead to bestiality, necrophilia, pedophilia, and the return of Nazis, as the people give up all their morals for economic stability. All things the General gives him applause for pointing out to the otherwise-unaware populace.

Finally, a bill has passed the Senate Finance Committee and will move to the Senate floor proper. No public option, but now they’re all out of committee and can begin the real and messy work of building a bill that the whole chamber will pass.

In opinions, Mr. Reich comes out firing at the health insurance industry's latest tantrum, saying it's time to call their bluff about higher premiums happening if they don't get their way. Mr. Reich suggests that this argument is the best reason yet for a public option and more competition - the insurance industry just admitted to us all they can’t handle the efficiency requirements that would make them able to compete and keep their costs down, even with new mandates. On the other side, the WSJ praises the insurance companies for finally waking up to what was going to happen to them even under the Baucus bill, but warns they may be too late and Americans may be forced into more expensive, less-useful coverage because of the contents of the bill. So, another vote for the public option, then?

Mr. Kurtz tries to wrap his head around why the new-President Obama would go after the Fox News network, wondering why his subordinates would make such explicit denunciations of the network usually opposed to him. Bill'O is on the point, offering his defense of the network and claiming that while the opinion people don't like the President, the news people have always been fair to him.

Mr. McGurn feels that science has become the new religion, but that no matter how much science continues to indicate we are electrochemical processes that think we're something better, we will always believe we are something more than those processes, and thus we will always be more than those processes, because we reject science’s amorality on issues important to us. It’s not an argument for a belief in God, but it is a certain smugness that says “Science will never be able to win against religion and metaphysical thinking. Nyah!”

Mr. Black warns us that our financial sector must be reduced to as small a factor as possible, because it preys on the real economy that keeps the country and its people strong and prosperous, and misallocates capital not where it will do good, but where it will make people money. Mr. Karabell provides the international perspective, warning us against keeping too much debt in the hands of foreign agents, lest our power decline like the post-World War II United Kingdom.

Mr. Crovitz tells old media companies that they're doing it wrong in their attempts to leverage the new media for themselves, and that this destruction of the old way will continue for some time.

Finally, more opinions trickling in about the Obama Nobel - the editor emeritus of the Washington Times calls it an ignoble prize, because Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and other "appeasers" have won it, while the people who fought evil in the world, like Reagan, Truman, Churchill, and the like, have never won it. And Obama has delivered, apparently, with the way he handles foreign policy, talking with people who should be snuffed out and leaving his allies twisting in the wind. Mr. Stephens notes the Prize is not really about people who bring about peace, but about people who believe (naively) that all conflict is a result of misunderstanding, and thus the Committee chose the perfect person for their ideals. It’s just that those ideals, Mr. Stephens implies, are not effective ones like Truman, de Gaulle, and the like, who actually fight to bring peace, instead of just talking about it. Mr. Tanillo says the Peace Prize is now damaged goods because of the Obama award, because it was an award for potential, not for actual, and the Peace Prize committee will now have to work really hard to rebuild themselves as something to be taken seriously.

Last for tonight, things to do and not do, now that H1N1 vaccinations are available. That, and go poke around the new GOP website, and see if the next verse is the same as the first.

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