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Mar. 13th, 2012 01:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* A US soldier went house to house murdering 16 men women and children in village in Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, people are very upset. Can we leave Afghanistan now, please? These atrocities only make us more enemies.
I am hearing a lot of speculation about what role his traumatic brain injury may have played in the massacre. I'm not going to speculate because those things can be really unpredictable even with two nearly identical injuries to the same part of the brain. I certainly am not a neurosurgeon, and even if I were, there wouldn't be enough information to venture an intelligent opinion. Similarly, I'm hearing a lot of speculation about PTSD being ignored to the detriment of soldiers at his home base here in the US. Again, not a shrink and not enough information. I know it's comforting to the media and a lot of folks consuming media to demonize folks with mental illnesses even though that's toxic and an asshole thing to do, which is the tact some news outlets are going with. At the same time the army has a couple hundred year old pattern of ignoring PTSD and telling people to just suck it up instead of giving proper treatment leading to a criminally high suicide rate and other problems. There is also the issue with the brutal way we keep sending the same pour bastards out over and over, tour after tour and the shitty lack of help with readjustment when they are home. There is speculation that this too may have played a part. I'm wary of all the speculation running ahead of the facts, and am simply waiting for more information.
* If any of you are interested in what's going on with Israel, Chris Hayes just did two hours of incredibly nuanced discussion of Israel and the Palestinians with a bunch of people who know what they are talking about. American coverage tends to be really simple and one sided, with no understanding of the complex internal debates within Israel or an understanding of history and context. This gets into as much of that as can be reasonably squeezed into two hours. This shit is important. Us stomping around the Middle East like a clumsy giant in a mine field is a stunningly bad idea.: http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/
* The Republicans are up in arms because there's a Doonesbury strip dramatizing the compulsory medical rape of women in Texas. After all, the real obscene thing here is not compulsory government ordered medical rape of women, but talking about it. Riiiiiight.
* A portion of Rush Limbaugh's national advertising has been suspended. This has been done in the hopes of slowing the hemorrhage of sponsors until attention focuses away again.
* Mitt Romney is out lying about the President again. He is claiming that small adjustments to Medicare pay out schedules will "end Medicare as we know it" unlike the Ryan plan to abolish Medicare in favour of forcing senior citizens and disabled folks to buy private insurance which he endorses. Riiiiiight. Also, Subtraction is addition, and taxing the very poor to pay for a huge extra tax cut for the extremely rich helps the 99%. Riiiiiight.
* Gingrich continues to claim that the way forward economically is to abolish child labour laws, fire all the adults and hire children at a fraction of the salary, thus depriving the children of an education and the family of even a subsistence income. This will magically cure poverty. Riiiiight. Mr. Gingrich also wants you to know that even though current high gas prices are caused by speculation fueled by events in Europe and the Middle east, he has a magic plan to drop gas by a dollar a gallon which he won't tell you about but you should trust him that it will work. Riiiiight.
* Delegate count so far: Romney 454, Santorum 212, Gingrich 107, Paul 47. The number needed to lock the convention is 1144. Remember, many of those delegates are unbound, and the numbers will change Tuesday night.
* Today was Doctor, library, grocery store for perishables, and I picked up more seeds and potting soil. No bulbs yet, alas. I swept the patio to the alarm and fascination of the cats. Once I can secure bulbs, I can set up the planters. Once I set up the planters, I can start setting up the patch of earth next to the patio. Less progress than I wanted today, but it's still progress.
* It occurs to me that not only have I been using less of my incense dominant red cap BPALs this year, but I have hardly added any in the last year. The loss of the three temple incense scents because they are now simply too much with my skin chemistry drew my attention to this. I've noticed that the sandalwood dominant soap sample I've been using this week was also too strong. I think I'm losing my ability to wear incense, or at least the stronger iterations. (I put colour coded labels on the caps with name and date of the scent as they are easier to find in the boxes that way. Yellow =smells like places, Blue= Food, Green = man scents, Red = Androgynous scents and incense dominant scents. These are not always the same thing. Mostly, I know a red cap when I smell it, but it's hard explaining it to normal people. I had to add an extra box this Fall for leather dominant scents, but the labels only come in the four colours. Long term, I ought to buy a label batch with different colour options so I can start differentiating leathers as a separate category.)
* In Syria yesterday, government forces went house to house in Homs murdering every unarmed civilian they found including the elderly and young children. Death toll is estimated at 45.
* It makes me sad that the best acting job Dean Winters can get is Mayhem on the insurance ads. How depressing is that?
* This amuses me, "Dickens, Holloway and product placement:" http://thequackdoctor.com/index.php/guest-post-dickens-holloway-and-product-placement/
I am hearing a lot of speculation about what role his traumatic brain injury may have played in the massacre. I'm not going to speculate because those things can be really unpredictable even with two nearly identical injuries to the same part of the brain. I certainly am not a neurosurgeon, and even if I were, there wouldn't be enough information to venture an intelligent opinion. Similarly, I'm hearing a lot of speculation about PTSD being ignored to the detriment of soldiers at his home base here in the US. Again, not a shrink and not enough information. I know it's comforting to the media and a lot of folks consuming media to demonize folks with mental illnesses even though that's toxic and an asshole thing to do, which is the tact some news outlets are going with. At the same time the army has a couple hundred year old pattern of ignoring PTSD and telling people to just suck it up instead of giving proper treatment leading to a criminally high suicide rate and other problems. There is also the issue with the brutal way we keep sending the same pour bastards out over and over, tour after tour and the shitty lack of help with readjustment when they are home. There is speculation that this too may have played a part. I'm wary of all the speculation running ahead of the facts, and am simply waiting for more information.
* If any of you are interested in what's going on with Israel, Chris Hayes just did two hours of incredibly nuanced discussion of Israel and the Palestinians with a bunch of people who know what they are talking about. American coverage tends to be really simple and one sided, with no understanding of the complex internal debates within Israel or an understanding of history and context. This gets into as much of that as can be reasonably squeezed into two hours. This shit is important. Us stomping around the Middle East like a clumsy giant in a mine field is a stunningly bad idea.: http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/
* The Republicans are up in arms because there's a Doonesbury strip dramatizing the compulsory medical rape of women in Texas. After all, the real obscene thing here is not compulsory government ordered medical rape of women, but talking about it. Riiiiiight.
* A portion of Rush Limbaugh's national advertising has been suspended. This has been done in the hopes of slowing the hemorrhage of sponsors until attention focuses away again.
* Mitt Romney is out lying about the President again. He is claiming that small adjustments to Medicare pay out schedules will "end Medicare as we know it" unlike the Ryan plan to abolish Medicare in favour of forcing senior citizens and disabled folks to buy private insurance which he endorses. Riiiiiight. Also, Subtraction is addition, and taxing the very poor to pay for a huge extra tax cut for the extremely rich helps the 99%. Riiiiiight.
* Gingrich continues to claim that the way forward economically is to abolish child labour laws, fire all the adults and hire children at a fraction of the salary, thus depriving the children of an education and the family of even a subsistence income. This will magically cure poverty. Riiiiight. Mr. Gingrich also wants you to know that even though current high gas prices are caused by speculation fueled by events in Europe and the Middle east, he has a magic plan to drop gas by a dollar a gallon which he won't tell you about but you should trust him that it will work. Riiiiight.
* Delegate count so far: Romney 454, Santorum 212, Gingrich 107, Paul 47. The number needed to lock the convention is 1144. Remember, many of those delegates are unbound, and the numbers will change Tuesday night.
* Today was Doctor, library, grocery store for perishables, and I picked up more seeds and potting soil. No bulbs yet, alas. I swept the patio to the alarm and fascination of the cats. Once I can secure bulbs, I can set up the planters. Once I set up the planters, I can start setting up the patch of earth next to the patio. Less progress than I wanted today, but it's still progress.
* It occurs to me that not only have I been using less of my incense dominant red cap BPALs this year, but I have hardly added any in the last year. The loss of the three temple incense scents because they are now simply too much with my skin chemistry drew my attention to this. I've noticed that the sandalwood dominant soap sample I've been using this week was also too strong. I think I'm losing my ability to wear incense, or at least the stronger iterations. (I put colour coded labels on the caps with name and date of the scent as they are easier to find in the boxes that way. Yellow =smells like places, Blue= Food, Green = man scents, Red = Androgynous scents and incense dominant scents. These are not always the same thing. Mostly, I know a red cap when I smell it, but it's hard explaining it to normal people. I had to add an extra box this Fall for leather dominant scents, but the labels only come in the four colours. Long term, I ought to buy a label batch with different colour options so I can start differentiating leathers as a separate category.)
* In Syria yesterday, government forces went house to house in Homs murdering every unarmed civilian they found including the elderly and young children. Death toll is estimated at 45.
* It makes me sad that the best acting job Dean Winters can get is Mayhem on the insurance ads. How depressing is that?
* This amuses me, "Dickens, Holloway and product placement:" http://thequackdoctor.com/index.php/guest-post-dickens-holloway-and-product-placement/