Tuesday, June 30, 2015

SAR #15181


"Nobody needs to justify why they 'need' a right. The burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right." Edward Snowden


Comedy, Tragedy, Farce: Most likely, the IMF will term Greece's non-timely payment as putting the loan “in arrears,” which will let the ECB pretend that it is not a default and find ways to keep this silly play running another three weeks. But come July 20th and Athens cannot pay the €3.5bn due on sovereign bonds held by the ECB it will, at last, be in default. As a season ticket-holder who has seen all the previous installments, that's my guess.

Scoreboard: On the good side of the ledger, the Supreme Court told BP and Anadarko to quit whining and pay up, upheld the power of independent commissions to draw congressional district lines, told Texas to stop trying to keep women from obtaining legal abortions, and told AZ and KS to stop trying to keep Democrats from voting. On the down side it suggested that affirmative action preferences in higher education are suspect and that human lives are not worth as much as coal company profits. 
 
Naiveté: Rand Paul wants to get the government out of the marriage business altogether. Quite how this would affect all the little legalities that marriage takes care of – property inheritance, medical decisions, various benefits and obligations - was not mentioned. 
 
Unclear On The Concept: It's nice to see that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore continues to display his complete ignorance of constitutional law and complete indifference to human emotions. He has instructed probate judges to drag their feet for as long as possible before giving up the already lost fight against same-sex marriage. The Texas attorney general claims that county clerks don't have to follow the law of the land if it hurts their feelings. 
 
This Just In: A review of the scientific evidence suggests that fluoride in the water supply may not prevent cavities after all. Is nothing sacred?

Problem Child: Poor President Erdogan doesn't know which way to turn. He doesn't want ISIS to establish a caliphate to compete with his vision of a resurrected Ottoman Empire, but he even more does not want the Kurds to be victorious in anything more important than a backgammon game. That explains the 18,000 Turkish soldiers marching into Syria to fight the Kurds.

Next Up (or Down): Puerto Rico cannot pay its debts. It owes about $72 billion and only has $1.72. The governor says that PR is now “in a death spiral”, but he's a politician not an IMF economist, so what does he know? Austerity, do I hear austerity?

Folly: Black Knight reports that US house prices rose 1% month-to-month in April from March. That's 12% on an annual basis. Did you get a raise?

Civility Service: NYC cops are outraged over a proposal that would require them to get a suspect's consent before conducting otherwise illegal searches and to provide citizens the phone number of the Civilian Complain Review Board.

Oh-Oh: Russia reportedly will have important positions in the Chinese-sponsored Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The US didn't even get an invitation to the dance.

Win Some, Lose Some: Because natural gas is mostly methane and methane is way worse than carbon dioxide in terms of global warming, if the entire production process leaks more than 3% of the gas involved it becomes worse for the environment than coal. It does, and is.

What’s traditional about being married three times? One thing almost all those Bible believers going on about God and marriage and gays and Hell and Perdition have in common is that they have not read the Bible. Or have they forgotten that it was fine to force captive virgins to be wives or concubines or just sex slaves, along with rape, incest, polygamy, and pimping out your daughter-in-law. Or that God likes marriage so much that, according to Jesus, there is no marriage in Heaven.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fluoridation was latched onto as a legal way to dispose of an highly toxic and otherwise difficult to dispose of industrial waste(aluminum smelting). Most of the product goes down the drains of consumers, diluted but still potent, and into the lakes & rivers, where it does the most harm, particularly to mollusk, which are one of the building blocks of the food chain.

The damage to people was and is only a side show. The money behind it paid for the pseudo-science that made environmentalist reluctant to take on the fight. CDC still takes bribes to put out clap trap like:
http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/pdf/pollick.pdf
Where toxicity levels claims are based on non-science linear approximations, dosages rates are fairy tales instead of hard data. Most environmental studies are paid for by a government that doesn't want to rock this boat of powerful money interests.

Matte Gray said...

Regarding Paul's naiveté, another effect of getting government out of the marriage business would be that folks who wanted to get married would have to join a church.

Anonymous said...

The opposite of Austerity is ______________________ ?

A) More debt for more grow-t with the benefits primarily going to "da-people"; like it was way back in the distant past when everything was better than now.
B) More debt for more grow-t with the benefits primarily going to the smart-n-savvy people who already own the society.
C) More grow-t without more debt; like it was in the distant past when everything was better than now.
D) It's a trick question.

kwark said...

Re "Naivete": This "suggestion" is offered only after the game didn't turn out as he would've liked - namely, that government WOULD interfere with the marriage business by banning same sex marriage. But hypocrite is his middle name. It would be humorous if he wasn't such a threat to the liberties he claims he's protecting.