July, 2012 archive
The Internet Is a Public Place 0
Glenn Greenwald can be irritating. He tends to focus on single issues and miss the big picture.
Even more irritating, when it comes to those single issues that attract his focus, he is often right.
Light Bloggery 0
Family ties weekend.
QOTD will be holding down the fort.
Justice in Time 1
Today’s local rag syndicates a column by Marc Thiessen, Republican flack, in which he wonders
He wanders around for several hundred words trying find a political reason connected to Senate confirmation process, political pressure on sitting judges, and several other stray dogs of ideas.
He doesn’t get to the reason, one that even the most dogmatic and obtuse lawyer with enough brains to pass the bar might notice from time to time.
Contemporary conservative political positions are consistently on the wrong side of truth, justice, and the American way.
Indeed, they are founded on lies (climate change, “job creators”), perpetuate injustice (gut out the vote), and auction the American way to the highest bidder (to hell with the poor, tax cuts for the rich).
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
Field surveys the latest news in gut out the vote.
Messaging 101: Keep Your Stories Straight 0
It is to laugh.
Twits on Twitter 0
The Chicago Tribune thinks that publishing an article about how to be a twit is a useful thing to do.
Taxing Concepts 0
The Denver Post tries to bring some sense to our political discourse about the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act. A snippet:
Yet in a move that puts him in accord with other Republicans, Romney on Wednesday repudiated statements made by his staff just two days earlier that maintained he still believed the mandate was a penalty, not a tax.
“The majority of the court said it is a tax, therefore it is a tax. The majority has spoken,” Romney said. “There is no way around that.” (See note below.)
Oh, please. Does Romney accept as gospel everything else the court says? Look, there are many politically important issues to debate regarding the Affordable Care Act, but the question of whether the individual mandate is a tax or a penalty is not one of them. The question is of interest to constitutional scholars, of course, but in practical terms it makes no difference in how the act affects individual Americans.
They are certainly correct.
And unlikely to be noticed. Truth is irrelevant to propaganda.
________________
Note below:
The Supreme Court also once said that all black people were slaves for life and could never be freed.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
(snip)
The four-week moving average, a less-volatile measure, fell to 385,750 last week from 387,250.
The number of people continuing to collect jobless benefits climbed by 4,000 in the week ended June 23 to 3.31 million. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs.
According to Bloomberg last week, that week’s figures were a disaster because they were slightly higher than Bloomberg’s “experts” predicted. Therefore these figures must be wonderful because they are lower than the “experts” predicted.
The figures lead to one inescapable conclusion. Bloomberg needs new experts.
DNS Doomsday 0
Despite repeated alerts, the number of computers that probably are infected is more than 277,000 worldwide, down from about 360,000 in April. Of those still infected, the FBI believes that about 64,000 are in the United States.
The malware changed the DNS (Dynamic Name System) settings in computers and routers to point to bogus DNS servers.
DNS provides the street signs for the internet. When you put “pineviewfarm.net” in your browser’s address bar, the computer goes to a DNS server, which in turn provides the ip address (97.74.215.117) of pineviewfarm.net. The browser then searches the back streets and alleyways of the innerwebs for that numeric address.
The malware was discovered a while ago and the perps put out of business; the servers have been kept on line to give persons a chance to check and fix their DNS settings. If you have a home router and use DHCP, the settings are stored in your router.
You can check your settings by going to http://www.dcwg.org.
Oh, and the malware worked only on Windows. No worries here.
With Liberty and Justice for All, the Mirror 0
D. Elfman offers a white person’s perspective on white privilege, telling how he was stopped by a policeman after someone resembling him was reported to have robbed a bank. A snippet:
While I’d have been within my rights to demand a search warrant, I opened the pouch and let him see that it contained only paper and electronics. See, I was perfectly aware that someone could reasonably look at that pouch and think it signaled that I was armed. I wore it like that anyway because it was convenient. This is what white privilege looks like.
The officer said, “Thanks, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t have a bazooka or something in there.”This is what white privilege looks like.He went on to explain about the bank robber, (This is what white privilege looks like.)and would I be willing to give him my contact information and an accounting of myself so that I could be excluded from the list of possible suspects?
I was not arrested, I was not brought in for questioning.
Read the rest.
Via Contradict Me.
“Don’t Get Sick. Die Quickly.” 0
When Congressman Grayson alleged that the Republican health care plan was
Don’t get sick. Die Quickly.
he was roundly derided by Republicans.
Now their actions are proving him correct.
Holding Back the Tides 0
Truth! They can’t handle the truth.
After enduring national ridicule for proposing a bill to outlaw any coastal sea level projections based on climate change data, the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature came up with a compromise Tuesday. Lawmakers effectively put the sea level debate on hold by asking for more studies – but none that involve climate change.
Next on the agenda: a law against thermometers because it’s not getting hotter, really, it isn’t.
Light Bloggery Today 0
Home improvements.
Poked a hole into the dead space at the base of the stairs and installed a cabinet door.