Shouzer

I’m not sure how many of you folks have heard, but Stephen Colbert announced he’s running for president (…in South Carolina, heh). According to Jordy, he plans to run as both a democrat and republican, which makes it just that much better.

I happened to be flipping through the channels the other day, and I caught O’Reilly talking about it. He had some “behavior analyst” person or something on, too. It was hilarious. The conclusion good ‘ol Bill came to was that Colbert is “just trying to be hip.” Oh thanks, Billy. I guess that’s your attempt to belittle him, eh? He must be doing something right…

I’ve been trying to stay abreast of the news at home, although I admittedly don’t do a very good job of it. Of course, I didn’t do a great job of it when I was still there, but that’s beside the point. I’ve read some about the tussle between Barack and Hilary over national security, and I don’t particularly like what I see. I read this article today, and it really scares me that these are our two mostly likely candidates for president.

According to the article, Barack wants to withdraw from Iraq, send more troops to Afghanistan and invade Pakistan. Maybe invade isn’t the right word there. It isn’t clear what level of troop commitment he is looking to make there. Still though, do we really need to attack another country? I just don’t see the point of this. Why can’t we have a leader that realizes you can’t fight a war of ideals with bullets and bombs?

Barack also stated that he would never use a nuclear weapon against terrorists in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and Hilary pounced on it say, “‘I don’t believe any president should make blanket statements with the regard to use or nonuse’ of nukes”. Well I don’t see why they shouldn’t make a blanket statement about the use of nukes. What possible scenario can she envision in which it would be a good idea to drop a nuclear weapon on terrorists in either of those countries?

Politics depress me.

I happened to catch Michael Moore on The Daily Show the other day.  It was ok, I guess.  I don’t really care for Michael Moore as an interviewee.  Mind you, I happen to thoroughly enjoy his movies.  Crazy fuckin’ communist or not (as Team America seems to make him out to be), I think he makes some good sense.  Bush == Bad.  Hurray, I agree!  I guess it doesn’t take much…

That being said, I don’t think he makes for a great interview.  He tries to be funny, and he’s really not.  That alone ruins it.  Despite this, his new movie SiCKO should be something most Americans can rally behind.  I find it hard to believe there’s a lot of people out there (particularly those in the middle class) who think the healthcare system in the US is as good as it should be.

So I have to admit I was surprised to hear from Moore that he was bumped from Larry King for Paris Hilton.  Paris fucking Hilton.  That’s just sad.  Probably more than healthcare, that’s the thing wrong with America.  She shouldn’t be news.  Ever.  EVER.  Apparently the interview brought in the highest ratings Larry King has ever gotten, so I guess I can’t blame him, though he’s basically feeding the monster.

Whatever.

So, read this and tell me something doesn’t sound wrong with that first sentence.  I mean, I guess I’m glad the House is doing this.  But, eh…  Was it really necessary?  I should hope not.

This story over on /. is just the kind of thing I was hoping some states would man up and do. Go Montana!

One of the comments on the story is a guy saying, “Isn’t this what Republicans used to be like? For state powers and against centralization? What would that make Bush? Fascist?” If I had mod points, I would have modded it up as Insightful. I posted long about how we’re moving closer and closer to a fascist state, so I’m glad somebody out there agrees with me.

Honestly, this story is just sad. A full four years after Bush stood on the USS Abraham Lincoln in his flight suit declaring “Mission Accomplished”, the Red Cross says the situation in Iraq is “ever-worsening”. Sweet.

Today I’m passing out a few free links to whoever wants them.

First up is an interesting article right here about a portable generator that produces its power from waste. It really doesn’t say what type of waste it accepts, but it’s cool nonetheless. It makes me think of the “Mr. Fusion” that the Doc had on the Delorean at the end of the first Back to the Future.

Next is a bit of a strange story from /.. Found here, it’s about Gorbachev apparently asking Bill Gates to step in on the side of a headmaster being charged with piracy. Apparently, if the unlucky headmaster is convicted, he could be sent to a Siberian prison camp. It seems more than a little disproportionate.

Third on the list of links is this link to the current rankings in college basketball. SIU has managed to make it into the top 20 in the coach’s poll. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that they have all five of their starters back from last year. Still, it’s nice to see them getting some respect. Hopefully they can keep playing the way they have lately, because they did have some dumb losses early on.

Up last is something I’m pretty happy about. For those of you that don’t remember, I’ve posted more than once about my belief that the Real ID Act was a bogus piece of shit (a fact exemplified by its being attached as a rider to a supplemental spending bill for the war in Iraq). Well, you can read here about a number of states that have basically said they won’t do it. Hurray for some states standing up for their citizens when the federal government won’t.

On that note, I also read over the weekend that minimum wage is being raised by about $2. It’s about time, but apparently it took the Democrats coming into power to make something like that happen.

I just read over this list of the 2006 “Bill of Wrongs”. It’s basically a list of the things the US did in 2006 that were outright illegal and generally ignored people’s supposedly inalienable rights. Once I hit #6, I honestly figured it couldn’t get much worse. But then it turns out that once in my life I underestimated our asshole in chief. I just don’t think you can find many things like this from other presidents. What’s the most ridiculous, though, is that even with Bush’s exceedingly low approval rating and the Dems just taking over Congress, another Republican will probably be voted into office in a couple years. You’d think everyone would learn.

Good word, newsages. I found three stories this morning on /. that I happened to like. The first, right here, is about how the US is actually going to begin pulling troops out of Iraq. That’s great news, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know what sort of ramifications it’ll have on the new government there, but it’s time for us to quit wasting American lives on it.

The next story, located here, is a bit more recently relevant to me. On the way back home from the cruise, American Airlines tore up one of our bags. The pulling handle was actually broken in half and the metal on it was bent up all crazy. They claim they don’t cover it, because it’s an “external attachment”, but that’s fucking bullshit. Those handles retract, and we sure as shit didn’t leave it out when we gave it to them. So somebody took it out and then fucked it up.

Anyway, the story is about the Sydney Airport using RFID tags to better track their bags. The part that caught my attention was this sentence: “Industry experts say that baggage mishandling costs the industry globally $US1.7 billion each year”. Oh boo-hoo. If the god damn airlines were just more careful with that shit, it wouldn’t happen. Morons.

The third and final story, which can be found here, is apparently about the Antikythera. It’s an analog computer that was developed almost 2000 years ago to map the positions of the sun and moon, and to map the lunar phases. It’s pretty cool, when you get right down to it.

I didn’t really pay much attention to the political atmosphere much here in Missouri purely because I was not going to be voting in it.  There was, however, one key issue that did keep my interest and I am happy to say the outcome was a good one. Amendment 2 was voted in favor by the people of Missouri by more than 27,000 votes, according an article in the Post Dispatch.  Amendment 2 allows for the protection of all forms of embryonic stem-cell research in the state allowed under federal law. 

This amendment had come under heavy scrutiny and political debate, especially by groups such as the Missourians Against Human Cloning.  In their opposition campaigns, they would use religious and moral ideals. Politics and religion rarely go well together, throw science in the mix and you surely have a recipe for disaster.  What really upsets me about the whole stem cell issue is that people automatically jump to the issue of human cloning.

Do I know if that would happen or not? No, I don’t, but neither do others who say it will happen if stem cell research is allowed.  I imagine it’s a sign of the times, just as it was when in-vitro fertilization was a new concept.

I’m no expert in stem cell research, but I have an understanding of how it works.  These cells are the precursors for every cell in the body. When stimulated properly they can grow into any adult cell–blood cells, brain cells, muscle cells, liver cells.  This isn’t a direct cure for people with incurable diseases, but it is a means to begin searching for one.

Just as in-vitro fertilizations and organ transplants were first met with criticism and problems, I hope that one day stem cell research will be accepted by all as a legitimate therapy and a means of finding cures for diseases.

In other news, nice to see that that the Democrats are now in the majority in the House.

Before you do anything anything today, take a lesson from our president. I’m off to eat the lunch, and maybe go to the malls.

I was browsing /., as I’ve been known to do, and noticed this story. It’s about how the US has dropped in the “Freedom of the Press Rating”. It’s pretty sad really. We were 17th in 2002, the first year they did it (I’m curious what we would have been around 98-99, during the end of the Clinton administration..).

Now we’ve dropped all the way to 53rd, primarily as a result of Bush attacking people who don’t share his pro-war viewpoint. It’s also because the federal government has refused to respect the right of a journalist to protect the anonymity of his sources. Freedom of the press is something we like to pimp when we’re “spreading democracy”, but apparently we don’t live up to the hype.

I would love to say that I find this story ridiculous, but I have no trouble believing it. I have long given up on the mainstream news media as they clearly suck. I think this story gives credibility to Jon Stewart’s tyraid on Crossfire in 2004. Check out the video here if you haven’t seen it.

I think the news media has a responsibility to be critical of our leaders to keep them in check, and they are clearly failing at that duty. I like this quote from the story:

“The Daily Show was much funnier, with less of the hype—references to photo ops, political endorsements, and polls—that typically overshadows substantive coverage on network news, according to the study.”

I think that tells it all.

Everyone should check out this video. It’s more than a little disturbing. Stack the supreme court? Who needs to when you can just break the law?

Check out this story about the government trying to protect us from ourselves. Basically, it seems to me that they’re trying to interfere with our lives just a little bit more.

Now, I imagine there actually is some legal basis for this, since schools are funded by the government. (Of course, OTOH, we fund the government…). It just seems like one of those things to me where you never know when they’ll decide to draw the line between what they can and can’t block.