The Earth’s Moons?

Earth Has Other Moons, Astronomers Say
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/12/21/earth-has-other-moons-astronomer-says/

I almost didn’t read this because the title seems so nonsensical on its surface, but since the definition of a moon is unfixed, it actually turns out that this is a very interesting science article. It seems the Earth will periodically (but almost continuously, it seems) capture stray asteroids as they wander about the solar system. The asteroids will then orbit the Earth/Moon system for a few years before being cast off (probably to be recaptured again in some future time). Given NASA’s desire to explore asteroids, this would appear to be the key quote:

…the other major thing on NASA’s list of things to do is send astronauts to an asteroid.

“The scientific potential of being able to first remotely characterize a meteoroid and then visit and bring it back to Earth would be unprecedented,”
…

More on the police state

Convicted for words, not deeds
Verdict on Massachussetts Muslim marks further erosion of fundamental U.S. rights
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/21/convicted_for_words_not_deeds/singleton/

Again, I hesitated in posting this because, after all, it is a routine, common, ordinary situation. Constitutional rights be damned, this dewd is a Muslim and he looked at me cross-eyed!

Still, if the tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, no one cares, so I will not turn a blind ear to the falling tree, I will care…

More proof (as if it were needed) that our future sucks…

If you accept, as I do, that our current President is an intellectual version of the drunk frat boy we had in office for the previous 8 years, thus is totally unqualified to lead our country by virtue of his selling out to special interests (to be honest, though, if any candidate refuses to sell out he/she would never get elected), then the only hope for positive future lies in the GOP race. However, when you have seen so much moronic blather spouted by the front runners (I still like (or don’t dislike, a distinction I haven’t resolved) Huntsman enough to vote for him if a miracle happens and he winds up the nominee) it is hard to find any hope. Hope is now officially dashed…

Gingrich Leads Revolt Against Judges
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-21/gingrich-leads-revolt-against-judges-by-vowing-to-ignore-court.html

It is one thing to actually sidestep the SC (as Obama has been doing by carefully creating situations where the SC isn’t actually allowed to rule), but to go on official public record stating you are going to totally ignore 1/3 of our nation’s checks and balances (be aware, of course, that Obama has already been ignoring Congress, so he has the distinction of already ignoring 2/3 of our checks and balances, but at least he doesn’t brag about it!) seems the height of idiocy.

Gingrich is

“fed up with elitist judges imposing secularism on the country and basically fundamentally changing the American Constitution.”

Of course, he is not actually fed at all on the idea of the executive branch fundamentally changing the Constitution by ignoring the judicial branch. It always astounds me that these people can keep such distinct ideas in their heads without their brains exploding, but I guess that is what makes them special.

Of course, there are issues with the SC (see http://sol-biotech.com/wordpress/2011/11/01/i-am-curious-is-it-only-the-conservative-justices/) and it seems clear to me that they are not operating on strictly legal grounds at all times, but it really disturbs me the casual way these nut jobs on the one hand demand total adherence to the Constitution on issues they favor while demanding it be tossed aside whenever it is inconvenient.

So, unless something bizarre happens and Huntsman becomes the GOP candidate (I just can’t see that happening, I figure it is more likely that the wacko Paul will be the candidate than Huntsman), I really see no advantage to the candidate from either party. One Constitutional trasher or the other and both want to continue to foster our growing income inequality and both want to trash our social safety net (Obama’s proposals, not too long ago, were mainstream GOP ideas, which, naturally, has forced the GOP candidates to get even further wacko to the right, but really, progressives got this clown elected? And they want to reelect him?) and both want endless war with steadily increasing erosion of privacy and civil liberties (with the exception of Paul, but he has plenty of other wacko ideas that disqualify him in my mind), so I can’t see any benefit in voting for either party. I am sure there will be third parties, but historically any vote for a third party was a vote thrown away and I don’t see any point in standing in line for the privilege of doing something pointless).

Twitter terrorism

Yesterday a good friend (hey Erik!) emailed me this link:

Welcome To The United Police States of America, Sponsored By Twitter
http://www.businessinsider.com/welcome-to-the-united-police-states-of-america-sponsored-by-twitter-2011-12

I responded thusly figuring the matter was just a glitch:

Coincidence or government conspiracy? In this case I would have to go with conspiracy, though perhaps it is someone within Twitter management who is a right wing nut job rather than all the way to the government. It is clearly selective and just as clearly incapable of doing what it is reported to do, so I can’t help but think there is some Cheney somewhere in the Twiterverse.

However, today I read this:

Can the U.S. Government close social media accounts?
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/20/the_u_s_government_targets_twitter_terrorism/singleton/

Now the article Erik sent me sounds less like some right wing nut job working in the higher echelons of Twitter admin and more like the government readying a sweep of account closures.

This is how a police state operates. One little niggling step at a time, but a journey of a thousand miles happens one measly step at a time and we are well past the starting gate people!

BTW, note the following:

…the London Police characterized the Occupy movement as a “Terrorist” group alongside Al Qaeda and FARC.

Wanna bet the did so at the urging of US govt. officials?

The roundup is about to begin!

What should be the model for OWS going forward

Special thanks to Erik for bringing this to my attention!

Occupy Portland Outsmarts Police, Creating Blueprint for Other Occupations
http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2011/12/15/occupy-portland-outsmarts-police-creating-blueprint-for-other-occupations/

Really interesting idea, so what that it was discovered accidentally! I guess this would be protest judo, use the enemy’s strengths against them. I particularly like that the tactic actually relies on the headless-ness of the organization and its lack of specific desire; how can the cops possibly block such an amorphous blob without resorting to excessive force (not that that has kept them from doing so, see Busted for Tweeting). I am still skeptical that they can make a difference, but as long as they are able to stay in the news in a positive way, I am all for it.

Keep your filthy votes to yourself!

Direct elections: A threat to America!
Why are Mitch McConnell and the rest of the GOP so terrified of a national popular vote?
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/direct_elections_a_threat_to_america/singleton/

An interesting read for those of us who give a damn about democracy. In addition to Gerrymandering, another proven way to make more votes count for your side is to keep voters from voting for the other side. Having read the article, though, I still remain convinced that my desire to create a substantial poll tax (http://sol-system.com/koxenrider/bok/PollTax.html) is still worth pursuing because there are too many idiot voters on all sides and make their election decision based on sheeple-targeted lies. I believe (perhaps wrongly) that that a more educated electorate (which naturally means restricting those who can vote, since our population is full of morons who are happy they are ignorant (including most of our Presidential candidates!)) would lead to a better government since the voters would be less likely to vote for people who are clearly pathological liars (which is all our current system attracts (well, corrupt pathological liars, that is)).

However, if we are going to stick with our idiotic voting system where all votes are created equal, then efforts like those mentioned in the article should be aggressively combated. It flabbergasts me that we have elected officials happy to go publicly on-record promoting things in direct violation of our Constitution, but I guess since so many have been so successful for so long, it is clear the sheeple won’t hold them accountable.

News regarding charter schools

Charter schools: Wave of the future?
http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/15/charter-schools-wave-of-the-future/?hpt=hp_bn2

I am not sure how I feel about charter schools. To the extent the cause public schools to improve, they are a good thing, but I am not wild about taking a large proportion of our education tax dollars and putting them into the hands of any for profit institution (not-for-profit institutions have problems as well, whenever the senior executives pay gets out of whack). I like that our current situation forces people who want to send their kids to private school to subsidize the public schools. I do not, however, like the current distribution method and advocate a more generalized system (see “It’s poverty and punitive funding formulas, stupid”).

The Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University studied charter school performance in 16 states. Researchers concluded that 17% of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools. But 37% of charter schools performed at rates below their public school counterparts. The remaining 46% showed no significant difference.

The Rand Corp., a nonprofit research foundation, looked at charter schools in eight states and found that, on average, charter schools as a whole aren’t producing results that differ substantially from traditional public school systems. However, the study showed that students at charter high schools are between 7% and 15% more likely to graduate than their traditional public school counterparts.

It would seem to me that charter schools, on average, are no different than public schools. If they somehow manage to cost 20% less (as the article mentions at one point), then there may be reasons to explore these alternatives, but if all charter schools use a lottery system to select students (something implied by the article) then there really isn’t any sort of market force driving the system and you have just added more complexity onto the system without any benefit.

Origins of the OWS

How the 99 percent was born
The Great Recession destroyed the right’s myth of a “liberal elite,” and forced the middle class to band together
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/15/how_the_99_percent_was_born/singleton/

An interesting article on the (surely deliberate) efforts to misdirect and dilute the focus of the sheeple, to divide and conquer, so to speak, the anger and angst of the shrinking middle class.

This is another interesting comment regarding our so-called safety net that divides so many people:

In fact, once an American starts to slip downward, a variety of forces kick in to help accelerate the slide. An estimated 60 percent of American firms now check applicants’ credit ratings, and discrimination against the unemployed is widespread enough to have begun to warrant Congressional concern. Even bankruptcy is a prohibitively expensive, often crushingly difficult status to achieve. Failure to pay government-imposed fines or fees can even lead, through a concatenation of unlucky breaks, to an arrest warrant or a criminal record. Where other once-wealthy nations have a safety net, America offers a greased chute, leading down to destitution with alarming speed.

So many conservative types I interact with appear to have the total conviction that any sort of population aid just makes lazy couch potatoes out of recipients and totally fail to comprehend that when our society can’t allow a significant fraction of the working population to pay their bills the entire economy takes a giant nose dive and EVERYONE is hurt (except, of course, the 1%, to whom money is just a way to keep score and earning less really doesn’t matter to them as long as no one else makes more).

The point of the social safety net (which I freely admit is abused by a certain percentage of people (why don’t they exclusively focus their ire on the few that abuse it instead of the majority that need it to keep from having to live under a bridge?)) is to provide a cushion to absorb the blow of the inevitable economic downturns against the common man. Just because you get lucky in a particular downturn and are not needing such tools doesn’t mean it can’t happen to you on the next go ’round. And anyone who thinks that the average Joe that gets government help is living large clearly hasn’t tried to live off of the meager resources grudgingly meted out. That sort of money is only ideal for people who have made the life long decision to game the system and I bet the majority of those could be trivially caught by the government with a few sweeps through their databases.

When part of our society is hurt our entire society is hurt and the point of helping out those in need is so that when you become the one in need there is an infrastructure in place. Could the government do things more efficiently? Of course! Having said that, if you try to privatize such activities (as is increasingly common as our bought-and-paid-for politicians sell out municipalities to their cronies) you automatically make the process less efficient in the long term because corporations exist to make a profit and corporate executives exists to maximize that profit and everyone in that situation loves a monopoly.

Of course, knowing why you are beaten down and exhausted from working so hard to pay the bills doesn’t change that the oligarchy is still in power and I still don’t see any path to overturning their power short of a bloody revolution and as I have pointed out before, as long as the oligarchy provide enough illusion to the sheeple that they can influence events, our society is immune from revolution.