[Mr. Mechanical]

It's like they're not even trying to hide the corruption. Well, they sort of are I suppose since the link does say that it's not obvious which member(s) of the Arizona House was responsible for swapping the bills.

One of these motherfuckers.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian Army stormed the restive city of Dara’a with tanks and soldiers and helped detain dozens in towns across the country Monday in an escalation of the widening crackdown on Syria’s five-week-old uprising, according to residents and human rights activists. They said at least 25 people were killed in Dara’a, with reports of bodies strewn in the streets.

The military’s move into the town seemed to signal a new, harrowing chapter in a crackdown that has already killed nearly 400 people. So far hewing to a mix of concessions and brute force, the government’s actions Monday indicated that it had chosen the latter, seeking to crush a wave of dissent in virtually every province that has shaken the once-uncontested rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

“The government has decided to choose the path of violence and repression,” said a Syrian analyst in Beirut, who asked to remain anonymous for his safety. “How far can they go in this repression? That is the question.”
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

Hey thanks psiga. I will probably check that out at some point. Maybe even tonight after I finish this term paper.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

SETI Institute to shut down alien-seeking radio dishes

And some commentary:

[Mr. Mechanical]

Yes! I've been waiting for something like that to happen. I'm glad to see it's starting to take off.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/osama-bin-laden-killed/story?id=13505703

Yep looks like it is for real. It'll be some nice closure for 9/11 for a lot of people. The wars will continue though.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Also Obama is going to speak soon.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

Yeah I know. I wish there was like a sarcasm tag for the internet because I wasn't actually being serious there.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Haha run to Canada. You guys just have no vision.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

NASA Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment

May 4, 2011: Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity.

Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).

"The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts," says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission.

"This is an epic result," adds Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis. An expert in Einstein's theories, Will chairs an independent panel of the National Research Council set up by NASA in 1998 to monitor and review the results of Gravity Probe B. "One day," he predicts, "this will be written up in textbooks as one of the classic experiments in the history of physics."
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[Mr. Mechanical]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/05/07/awlaki/index.html

[Mr. Mechanical]

Recently-released WikiLeaks documents show that detained al Qaeda members have predicted nuclear reprisals if Osama bin Laden were captured or killed.

[Mr. Mechanical]

Well you could argue that it is in the constitution. Right there at the beginning, even.

[Mr. Mechanical]

I don't know! I'm not exactly a constitutional scholar myself. But if the overall purpose of the document is to promote the general welfare, among other things, then you shouldn't really need a specific amendment telling you exactly how to do it. Part of the great thing about the constitution is that it's vague enough to be read and interpreted in different ways.

But I think arguing against healthcare from a constitutional standpoint is a bit disingenuous. There are a lot of things that aren't "in the constitution" that we act as though they were: http://www.usconstitution.net/constnot.html
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[Mr. Mechanical]

So is Fukushima still spitting radiation into the atmosphere or what? I'm not surprised that it's in meltdown since that seems like a thing you would expect a reactor to do after getting hit with a giant earthquake. Interesting that they were able to go this long without declaring it though. It seemed like they had something of a handle on the situation so what changed? Was that all just really good pr and their grasp on the situation has only ever been tenuous at best? And the weeks of leaking radioactive water into the ocean doesn't sound very good either! I'm wondering if maybe by this point they shouldn't just start dumping millions of tons of concrete onto the thing and just call it a wash.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

So I guess the big worry now is the radiated sea water no one noticed for however many weeks then? I still say just bury the whole thing in concrete.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

Well, only the half facing the sun though right?
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[Mr. Mechanical]

That's interesting. So is it conceivable that certain spots of the planet could just luck out and not get affected by it? How things could change overnight if, say, most of the west coast of the US and some spots in India and Eastern Europe all managed to keep the lights on while everyone else went dark.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Wasn't this the plot to Lethal Weapon 2?
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater/Xe, is building up a merc army for the United Arab Emirates.

[Mr. Mechanical]

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2011/05/welcome-to-the-debt-ceiling/

Hit the debt ceiling today. I guess that means something to someone.

[Mr. Mechanical]

Revolution in Spain

Some good pictures: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/05/a-defiant-spanish-revolution/100070/
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Ron Paul is too much of a wild card. I would be down for drug legalization/decriminalization and a more sensible foreign policy than being the world's police force* or flexing imperial ambitions but Ron Paul seems to want to return America to some kind of idealized (read: false) 19th century capitalist utopia. Yet, if you look at the history of that period it actually wasn't any fun for anyone except the same capitalist robber-baron wealthy elite types who sit atop the current economic food chain.

I might vote for Paul for laughs since I don't think he'd actually win and all the other candidates are just going to perpetuate the status quo but there is a real fear that if he did win it would result in changes to social policy that basically throw the most destitute among us under the bus. Unfortunately that might be the risk we are going to be forced to consider taking if we're to get some real change happening in this country but I don't know if it's a change I would want to believe in. If you could somehow indicate that a Ron Paul presidency isn't going to result in the country's poor starving and eventually rioting en masse after he successfully abolishes the welfare state then I might give him more serious consideration.

*though sometimes the world really does seem to need a police force. However, if the US is it then we're doing a terrible job of it because we only "intervene" in places where we obviously get something out of it and not purely for the humanitarian reasons that get played up because if that were the case we'd be intervening in Darfur and any number of other places as well as Libya. koholinttakeout was spot on with the observation that Libya is shaping up to be another Kosovo.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Welp, if the proposed changes to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (which was passed days after 9/11 to give the Executive the legal grounding to go after terrorists) go through as part of the National Defense Authorization Bill (which is up for consideration today or tomorrow) then it will be another nail in the coffin containing hope's corpse and the door will be flung wide open for continued, perpetual warfare across the globe and unfettered by any limitations.

I wish that was hyperbole but the exact changes the Republicans are seeking will result in precisely that happening. From New Republic:

[Mr. Mechanical]

New Adam Curtis documentary, looking at the historical background that has led to the inter-connected technoculture we live in as well as the current financial crisis: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Obama Administration Threatens Veto of Defense Bill Over Redefinition of AUMF

...among other things but the biggie is the threat to veto over the section redefining what the AUMF authorizes in the war on terror. I've got my fingers crossed but I suspect there will be some bs "compromise" that leaves intact some of the more ambiguous language of the redefinition since the door-in-the-face technique is quite an effective persuasion method.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

That his voting record has been consistent with his principles is a huge plus in favor of his character, yeah. It makes it seem less likely that he'd just turn around and do the opposite of what he promised once in office, even though the nature of the office means that's still a possibility. But realistically I just don't see the GOP backing Paul so it's a moot point anyway. He was on the ballot in like two states in 2008, right? Though at this point the GOP don't really have any other decent candidates so in this kind of environment he might have a real chance if he gets party support but the party doesn't like the guy for obvious reasons. Also his extreme views pretty much guarantee that he'll only ever get a small slice of the vote since the more "moderate" candidates can use him as a bogeyman and make their own fucked up ideas seem reasonable by comparison.

As for him wanting to eliminate "needless bureaucracies", yeah, sounds good and all but I think it's a bit more complicated than that. I do think that at present if you do away with all those departments and try to unload all the functions they perform on the states it would probably be disastrous. State governments are no less susceptible to cronyism and mismanagement than at the federal level (and you could even argue they are more so) and many of them barely function as it is. I don't really have any real answer beyond that at the moment, I'd need to do some research first.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Good food for thought, koholinttakeout. You should post in this thread more often!
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

There's http://www.fabathome.org/ for 3D printing stuff. I want to build one myself at some point, but I don't know what I'd make with it yet.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110601/01515014500/senators-want-to-put-people-jail-embedding-youtube-videos.shtml
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Your phone/internet/email/everything is still tapped just fyi.

I mean it's old news by now but just to underscore the point every phone number you dial, email you send, and person you talk to online or through your various other digital devices are all recorded and stored forever by the NSA who can do a google-style search of the information any time they wish. You have no privacy from the prying eyes of the US government because you might be a terrorist now or at some point in the future but in order for them to do their job in protecting you they need to be able to operate in total and complete secrecy as they spy on you. America is the new Soviet Union, comrades!

Reading this article I experience a mix of emotions. Anger comes on first, of course, as it usually does followed by a kind of depressed melancholy because I realize that this is normalized now. It has become the status quo and it will persist for at least a generation or two longer because 1) most Americans are probably still largely unaware of the true extent to which they have no privacy, 2) those who are most aware of how wrong this is and who are constantly trying to bring it to larger public awareness are largely in no position to actually affect any change, and 3) outside of a handful of congressmen and senators the people running the government and its various fiefdoms views these programs as a good and necessary thing to have around and have no intention of really changing them now that they are established.

The more I learn about this kind of stuff the more defeated I feel because I can't think of any way to effectively fight this. Even trying to fight it "the right way" and nonviolently and such like Drake (whom the article is about) will still bring you under the attention of the people in power and if they see you as a threat they will increasingly do whatever it takes to neutralize you. You can't just put the "right" sort of people in charge of these programs either because the power they endow is too corrosive, so any change in leadership will be largely ineffective as the majority of the new leadership becomes corrupted or perverted by power.

Just one more cause for despair in our modern world. If I didn't believe that there was some sort of cosmic balancing effect that was always going on throughout the universe I might become a true doomsayer and add my voice to those internet legions who already believe that America (and through America, the rest of the world) is beyond all hope. I just remind myself of that axiom from physics, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I can convince myself that we're already seeing the reaction to this kind of perverse power in the world coming from organizations like Wikileaks or the entire revolutionary wave that is sweeping the world, so I can still believe that maybe it's not too late after all and somehow things won't be so fucked up in the future.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Thanks for those, sawtooth. I'm about halfway through the second link now. Very fun (and informative!) reading.

edit-Part 3 is turning out to be the real winner of the bunch though. Goddamn.

edit2-That felt really cathartic reading all of that.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Study shows why over 30 percent of USA never uses 'Net

Like, never ever uses it.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Glad you're back and I look forward to reading your response. A new thread for that discussion might be better since there is clearly a lot of ground to cover, but I don't really care one way or the other.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Those are common criticisms, yes. I agree with 2 but am not sure about 1. There are definitely plenty of ideologues, idiots and true believers of various stripes running our institutions but there are also just as many self-styled cold logicians realpolitiking about trying to make what seem to them the most pragmatic or rational decisions. I think the people in the second group are just as susceptible to their own kinds of weaknesses as the first group (though their weaknesses obviously will not always be the same) and probably more than we realize.

So, basically, everyone has the potential to be a fuck-up. Not just the usual suspects. And the people we would think of as least likely to be fuck-ups probably have a greater chance of being fuck-ups than we think. The higher up the political food chain you go the harder it is to make a decision that doesn't have some negative affect on someone somewhere under you. Good decision-makers do just as much to mitigate or minimize damages they cause or know they will likely cause as they do to make decisions that will have the widest range of positive effects.
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