And putting her in foster care, in order to fulfill the requirements of a housing covenant is progressive?

Yes, the grandparents ought to have moved out, it appears that they are attempting to do so, and that the market has not cooperated accordingly.

This is not a yapping dog, or someone playing their stereo too loud, nor is it someone who leaves their car in the driveway, or puts up a basketball hoop, this is a child, a fellow human being, who ended up living with her grandparents through no fault of her own. Does anyone else find the idea of punishing her for circumstances and actions completely beyond her control a little bizarre?

I have to say, I was deeply impressed, for a man who shows nothing and implies everything, his stuff was still all too capable of keeping me up at night. Eli Roth & co. ought to read some of this, it might improve their work.

That said, it amazed me how many crappy Syfy original pictures are taken from "At the Mountains of Madness." The story is brilliant, but there is something about Lovecraft's tone that really has not been translated all that well to film.

Thanks to those Loungers who got me interested, it's been a while since I read something that engrossing.

Ok, The UC system (where I work and study) goes back into session next week. As such I thought I'd share some strange things I have noticed in my (admittedly far too long) academic career.

History Majors have a hard time staying on topic. (Tangents are our stock in trade)

Political Science Majors will argue with you about ANYTHING.

Philosophy Majors will also argue with you about anything, the difference is, you won't understand what the hell they're talking about.

You can tell the women who are in the natural sciences (Botany, Geology, Biology, etc...) because they are the ones who regardless of the fashion du jour, always dress for the field, and wear sensible shoes around campus. (which actually makes them more attractive in my book)

Business majors are already convinced that while you will be starving in the street, they will be raking in the dough, and they're not afraid to let you know.

You can tell the pre-med students by their pale complexions (they don't get out of the classroom much)

Feel free to add your own...

I know I sound like some idiot tea-bagger for asking this, but having read some comments on DU in the past few days, I have to wonder.

For the record, as wonderful as it might be for President Obama to extend Medicare to all by Executive Order, it would be unconstitutional. It infringes on the powers of the purse which are delegated to Congress in Article 1 of the Constitution.

The outcomes of such an action, while perhaps wonderful in the short-term, would be disastrous in the long-term, I see three possibilities:

1. Such an overstepping of authority leads to a massive public outcry, that brings us yet another GOP President in 2012, who just suspends, or massively depletes funding to Pres. Obama's executive-ordered Medicare.

2. Executive overreach leads to impeachment proceedings against Pres. Obama, leading to his removal from office, the killing of the executive order, and our loss of the White House in 2012.

3. The Supreme Court rules that such an executive order is unconstitutional, and it is repealed.

Either way, we don't get what we want, and lose so much more in the process. The Constitution is ungainly, inconvenient, and at times a pain in the neck, but it is designed to deprive any branch of the government from having too much power, even if it is used with the best intentions. Even if we want a dictator to move our policies forward (and I would imagine that very few actually want this) we have no right to destroy President Obama by thrusting this on him.

Flame away if you want, but violating the Constitution is wrong, regardless of reason or party affiliation.

And certainly, I don't think we should subsidize this in anyway. That said, part of being pro-choice is accepting the right of people to do exactly what they are doing. Do I question their judgment? Absolutely. Do I feel for their children? Certainly. Am I disgusted at the fact that they are profiting off of the exploitation of their children? Yes. Do I find the Quiverfull movement to be creepier than all hell? Yeah.

That said, do I believe that they have the right to have as many children as they want? Yes.

Don't like that? Pass a law stipulating a maximum number of children, and enforce it with taxation.

Feel free to flame away, its a slow day and I'm wearing my asbestos underwear.

But they're all exercises in broad brush immaturity.

I was born in 1982, depending on how you divide up the generations (and there are more ways than I can count) I was either born at the exact end of Generation X or the beginning of Generation Y (The so-called "millennials") Contrary to the stereotypical characterization of a millennial as a spoiled child who never worked a day in their life, I've had a job since I was 16, and my parents have never paid my college tuition. This coming quarter I get to look forward to yet another year of working full-time, holding down 12 units and being the sole support for my wife and child. Such is life.

Now, could we all get off our bloody high-horses for a minute? Not all boomers were self-absorbed navel-gazing potheads who screwed up the world while they were screwing each other. Not all Gen X'ers were mopey, angst-ridden heroin-addicts who blamed the world for their problems, and not all Millennials are asocial, internet addicts, who have never worked a day in their life, and would lapse into catatonic shock if the ear-buds from their MP3 players were removed and their access to Facebook was denied for a 24 hour period.

Generational stereotypes are broad brush labels which we use to place individuals into boxes and dismiss them without attempting to understand them. They are excuses, allowing us to blame our parents, older brothers and sisters, children or grandchildren for our problems. Yes, we inherit our world from our forebears, problems and all. Yes, we pass our both our achievements and our crap down to our children, who will alternately thank and curse us for it. And they, just as we, will be right, and wrong at the same time.

The Boomers strove mightily to end segregation, establish women's rights, and end the Vietnam War too. The Gen X'ers helped create the information/internet driven world we live in today, and the millennials went overwhelmingly for Obama in the last election. Nothing is ever so simple as our preconceived notions would have us believe.

Yes I saw the moron in NH. As did the Secret Service. He was covered and monitored with greater detail than Gisele Bundchen is when she sunbathes on the Riviera. Had he so much as twitched in a manner that they didn't like, he would have either been escorted away, and should he have attempted to react with violence, he would have achieved the ideal his sign was proclaiming, watering the liberty tree with his own idiotic blood.

They're trying to make you flinch. Freak out, decide en masse to attack the 2nd Amendment so that they finally have grounds for their idiot revolution (you see Obama really is trying to take away our guns, I done told ya! etc, etc...)

Realize here and now that President Obama understood the terrible risks he was taking when he decided to run for this office. He knew he would arouse the lunatic fringe in this nation to a degree never before seen. He got Secret Service protection earlier than any previous candidate, the White House recieves more threats for him than any previous President. He knows that every time he walks out in public he is committing his life into the hands of others. He is not afraid, we shouldn't be either.

Consider for a moment VP Biden, President Obama picked him for a good reason. Knowing that the unthinkable was a possibility, he has sought to place the future of the nation in the hands of a man who is smart, serious, experienced and willing to carry on with his reforms. Should the unthinkable happen, the work will go on.

Indeed, should the unthinkable happen, it may well be the death-knell for the RW hate machine in this nation. They will have wholly isolated themselves as a group of murdering fanatics, who even most self-described "conservatives" will avoid, so as not to be attached to a group of assassins, who have widowed a young wife and orphaned two innocent girls.

But enough of that dark vision. President Obama knows the risks and is not afraid, we shouldn't be either.

Starting with Peleiu the Japanese Army switched tactics to oppose the U.S. "Island Hopping" strategy. Instead of massive resistance on the beach in a series of "banzai" charges, they turned to a strategy of attrition, where they held out in the volcanic caves and highlands of these islands, and fought long, grinding delaying campaigns.

Who is to say that such would not have been the case on Kyushu and Honshu, targets of Operations Olympic and Coronet?

Furthermore, those who advocate blockade... Assuming a blockade of Japan was both feasible and workable, what is your position on the decade of sanctions we held on Iraq? If our starvation of a generation of Iraqi children was immoral, would it not have been equally so to do so to the Japanese?

Finally, let us consider the Soviet angle for a moment... By the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Army was already in motion, engaging the Japanese in Manchuria, as well as sweeping down Sakhalin and the Kuriles, toward a possible occupation of Hokkaido and northern Honshu. Considering the fate of other regions occupied by the Soviets in east Asia, there is the possibility that, much like on the Korean peninsula, we would still be maintaining an armed border between a U.S. backed South Japan and a pseudo-Stalinist North?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were awful events, horrors without true parallel in human history (if for no other reason than that so little ordinance was necessary to cause so much death) They also stand as awful harbingers of the ultimate cost of total war, which is the total annihilation of the human race. Yet the alternatives in August 1945 were by no means marvelous. Did Truman make the wrong decision, maybe. But as the grandson of two men who enlisted in the Navy in 1945, any alternative would have had more than academic consequences for me and my family, as it would have had for the families of countless thousands, if not millions of Americans and Japanese (as well as likely Russians) that were otherwise spared.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pel...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Oki...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dow...

Edited to add reading material

Choose your media format, I'm open to all.

My picks:
Ishamael - Wheel of Time
The Mule - Foundation Series, Isaac Asimov
The Pod People from "Body Snatchers" - movie still scares the hell out of me.

How about you?

On Edit: I think I would be remiss if I did not add Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Dune) some bastards come back even when they're dead.

For those of you who will be offended by my comments, let me apologize beforehand, this is a rant by a frustrated soul, if you choose to read further, know that you have been warned.





Is anyone else tired of the endless hope-bashing on this board? I realize that all we got under Bush, and indeed to some degree under Clinton were optimistic crocks of crap, but seriously, would someone point out to me the virtues of pessimistic cynicism, because I'm not seeing it. Sure, hope alone doesn't pay the bills, feed the family or put a roof over one's head, but have you ever tried to do those things without it? The rash of men committing suicide in this country after slaughtering their families is a symptom of hopelessness, of coming to terms with the utterly pessimistic view of the universe that everyone seems to be selling right now. We have to hope that things will turn around, or why the hell did we bother coming out in the last election at all? After all, if it's only going to get worse anyway, why didn't we vote for the other moron, as he at least could promise us a quick descent into oblivion? To some degree I get it, we're scared. We've been had someone pissing down our back and telling us it's raining for so long that we can't even begin to believe that anyone would do differently. But forgive me if I choose to hope for the best, even as I prepare for the worst, to do otherwise would involve little more preparation than sticking my head in the oven.

Ok, end of rant, feel free to flame away.

(Well, only if you want to...)

I actually can't limit it to one, so feel free to add as many as you like.

Gurney Halleck - Dune
Sherlock Holmes
Davram Bashere - Wheel of Time Series
Edmond Dantes - The Count of Monte Cristo
Hamlet

And of course...

Sydney Carton - A Tale of Two Cities

To begin with, I must admit that I'm an awkward and unimpressive sight in public, and as such I rarely interact much with the people around me, unless the other person opens the conversation. That said as I went to the supermarket this evening, I must have been feeling exceedingly clever, because I actually decided to make a joke to the checkout girl. At the local market they are asking for $1.00 donations to the American Heart Association. Now the Checker's name was Charity (remember this, it's important.) So, when she asked if I could make a donation (I couldn't, money's kinda tight) I responded:

"Fancy that, a girl with a name like yours, asking me something like that."

To which I received a blank stare. The girl behind me, who was an off duty worker at the grocery store, responded to me:

"I have a fancy name too." And indeed she did, which I admitted, yet I stated that her name did not work with my pun. At that point I got two blank stares.

So in exasperation I explained that the fact that a girl named Charity asked me to make a donation was funny. Finally I got some awkward laughs, and a smile. And my father wonders why I never flirted much in High School

Anyhow, Mrs. Carton needn't worry about a possible wandering eye on my part, I seem to be to irredeemably weird for that to ever be a problem.

For many poor whites across the country, the message sent to them is that they need no social justice, they need no reform, no assistance, no health care. Such things are always characterized as assisting idle non-whites, and being funded by the labors of working whites. What is artfully omitted from this whole discourse is how such programs and policies do, and would assist poor whites as well. As a way of maintaining a rich and white hegemony over society, TPTB sell poor whites an empty shell of "whiteness" that neither extracts them from poverty, nor allows them to better the lives of their children. It is an empty conceit, a sense that they are better than their neighbors, when in reality they are as wretched and exploited as their fellows.

Yet we cling, white-knuckled to that sense of superior identity, and rail in uncomprehending rage that the empty trope of "whiteness" does not gain for us riches or social ascendance, and attribute our continued wretchedness to various shadowy conspiracy theories about how any number of groups try to hold them back. (Such idiocy forms the bulk of the ideas expressed on FR and RW radio) And yet we never realize that the primary thing holding us back is the conceit we have been sold and perpetuate to the succeeding generations. This isn't only the case in the South, although it might provide a blueprint of sorts, it manifests itself in both rural America, and in the Suburbs as well. We realize dimly that the so-called "superiority" that was supposedly our birthright does not grant us the greatness, nor the honor that we feel is our due. What most of us fail to realize is that it never really did. That racism has always held us back, by causing us to turn against our neighbors (both literal and figurative) while ignoring our real oppressors.

So long as white America (Of which I form a part) sees members of other ethnic groups as competitors and interlopers instead of neighbors and fellow-travelers toward a common future, we will not progress in this nation. Instead, clinging to an empty and threadbare "privilege" we will drag much of the nation into misery with us.

Would your time not be better spent elsewhere? I will not make my customary joke about hemlock here, because I fear you might take me more seriously than usual. That said, if there is no hope, would not your time be better spent stockpiling ammunition and canned food in a bunker somewhere in the hills?

Seriously friend, stay away from gas stoves, second story windows or higher, razorblades and ropes. I see in the tone of your post the very terror which would have my heart and has already seized the hearts of many in this nation, who in fits of dispair and narcissism have slaughtered their families and then taken their own lives as well. I am not yet prepared to give in to the permanent solution for all problems, and am not yet so eaten up by panic to seek to slaughter those most dear to me to protect them from what are still phantom dangers. Actions such as the ones you suggest are not the actions of the clear-eyed prophet, but those of men and women (but mostly men) who have become so deluded by fear and despair that they mistake darkness for light, death for life and panic and terror for action.

There have been worse times than today, and as bad as it will likely get, it would have to reach the levels of the Bubonic Plague to even approach the levels of hopelessness to which you now prophesy. It will not be so.

Come back to the light my friend, we are not yet in the showers the barbarians, while visible in the distance, are not yet at the gates, and we have expelled the lunatics from ruling the asylum. There is still time, so long as there are some who will keep the flame of freedom and civilization burning bright and are willing to shed not only their life's blood for it, but their daily sweat as well. We will yet endure and see the days renewed.

The recent overthrow of the minority leader in the California State Senate proves what many Californians have known for a very long time, the state GOP, rendered mostly irrelevant through their own extremism, have decided to fold their arms, pout and watch the state go down in flames. The bankruptcy of the State of California, the sixth largest economy on earth, is the ultimate monument to the policies of Grover Norquist and his ilk. As the right has been unable to shrink California's state government until it was "small enough to drown in a bathtub" they have decided to use the last tool available to them (the super-majority requirement to pass a budget through the Legislature) in order to forcibly strangle the state.

This is indicative of the whole neocon philosophy of government, that the old system has to be smashed in order for a new system to be born from the chaos. What the ideologues of the right have yet failed to learn, is that the only thing born of chaos, is more chaos. This will become readily apparent later this year, when the winter rainstorms give way to the dry heat of summer, and the California Chaparral goes through its yearly process of self-immolation. Without adequate funding, how will the already over-stretched Cal Fire organization manage to hold back this year's walls of flame?

The irony is, that many of the regions which will face the worst burns, such as San Diego County, Orange County and the High Desert, have been Republican strongholds for years. Effectively, the representatives for these regions have voted for the annihilation of their constituents. Nevertheless, there will be plenty of Californians who will lose their homes this summer who have urgently pled for a budget, any budget to pass. Yet nature, who respects neither borders nor jurisdictions, will not pay attention to voting records or party affiliation either, left and right alike will be consumed in the coming conflagration.

Will we remember the disastrous effects of this neglect and obstructionism come 2010? I certainly hope so. Assuming there is any state left to reclaim by then, one of the primary goals for the midterm ballot should be a referendum ensuring that this last measure of Republican obstructionism in budgetary matters is discarded on the ash-heap of history. The voters of the Golden State should look to pass a measure that overturns Proposition 13's longstanding requirement of a super-majority to pass the state budget. If all that is required to pass a budget in California is a simple majority, the state GOP will be forced to either move into the California mainstream, or fade into extremist oblivion.