Psychopolitik 2.0

Too easy…:

Government officials in charge of collecting billions of dollars worth of royalties from oil and gas companies accepted lavish gifts, steered contracts to favored firms and engaged in illicit sex with employees of the energy companies, federal investigators reported today.

Investigators from the Interior Department’s inspector general’s office said more than a dozen employees, including the former director of the oil royalty program, accepted gifts including ski trips, sports tickets and golf outings. The report alleges that the former director, Gregory W. Smith, also arranged side deals that personally netted him more than $30,000.

The report contains fresh allegations about the culture and practices at the beleaguered royalty-in-kind program of Interior’s Minerals Management Service, which last year collected more than $4 billion worth of oil and natural gas from companies given contracts to tap energy on federal and Indian lands and offshore. The revelations come as Congress is set to consider opening up federal lands in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge and offshore of Florida for drilling.

The program, based near Denver, has been under multiple investigations since 2006 by the Interior Department’s secretary, its inspector general, the Justice Department and Congress for alleged mismanagement and conflicts of interest.

In the report released today, investigators said they “discovered a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity.” Nineteen oil marketers and other employees in the office are accused of having personal, and sometimes sexual, relationships with representatives from a group of favorite oil and gas companies from 2002 through 2006.

LOL…think lube was involved?

On a serious note though, hijinx like the above feed the practical argument against the State handling this kind of crap.  A philosophical/moral argument is here, in case any newcomers are unfamiliar with my view of property rights w/r/t natural resources.

So Google has a browser now.  I’ve been just fine with Firefox thus far, but I keep up with this kind of stuff in the background.  Thought to myself “Hmm, maybe I’ll download this ‘Chrome’ later, give it a whirl”.

Then, I check my email…

I’m on lists for some tech sites like Cnet, ZDnet & PCworld, so I get email digests w/ links to their articles.  First one brags about Chrome’s speed handling Javascript.  My own experience with Java has largely consisted of broken scripts, page hangs, unnecessary wasting of CPU & memory, and the constant stream of Updates That Accomplish Nothing, w/ the only benefit I can recall being the occasional little web game.  Much as the speed sounds nice, it’s not like Google can fix bad site coding.  I’m at “eh”.

Second one?  Oh, just a DoS security hole…

Security is the main reason I switched from IE forever ago.  I’ll pass.

That question: “how do you make obsessed Sci-Fi geeks and military enthusiasts come to simultaneous orgasm?”

Answer:

Laser weapons mounted on trucks could be ready to roll into battle within five years. This week Boeing won a $36 million contract from the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command to build the optics needed to track and focus lethal laser energy onto rockets, artillery shells and mortar rounds. The High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator will use a new solid-state laser powered by electricity from a truck-mounted diesel generator, rather than bulky and dangerous chemicals.

Any bets on how long after launch until the lasers get aimed at people?

In a previous post about U.S. bank failures, I expressed puzzlement at the quoted number of crapouts.  Thanks to Black Bloke, a convenient list has been brought to our attention.  Note that 10 so far have failed this year alone…

Anyone else think a monetary-themed Fail image would be appropriate?  Maybe a picture of one of the closed banks, or of someone standing by the door thinking “WTF?” w/ a short comment about the absurdity of a bank failing at having money?  Basically, a financial version of one of these is what I’m talking about:

Feel free to correct me if one has already been done.

Edit 090108: No bank fail image as of yet, but Mike points to this artistic rendering of another key to the current clusterfuck:

One “major” candidate has as his drill-into-your-skull buzzword “change”, then switches to agree with the capitulation the rest of his party likes.  The other adopts “maverick” as his zombie term, and flips to blend in more with the flock.

One makes rhetorical pseudo-attacks on “old Washington” & picks as his running mate someone who’s been in the Senate since he was 11.  The other constantly barks about experience and picks a running mate with less experience than his opponent.

Both engage in arguments over who is “elitist”, despite the obvious answer that anyone with a chance in hell of political power is by definition part of the elite.

“Ok”, so the still insistent on embracing the election may say, “what about 3rd parties?”.  Well, the Libertarians nominated someone whose stated goal was “restoring confidence in government”.  As for the Greens?  Well…at least Roseanne endorses their pick.

Ain’t we got fun?

I know it smells good, but you might wanna put it out.  The incense, I mean:

Burning incense may create a sweet scent, but regularly inhaling the smoke could put people at risk of cancers of the respiratory tract, researchers reported Monday.

In a study of more than 61,000 ethnic Chinese living in Singapore who were followed for up to 12 years, the investigators found a link between heavy incense use and various respiratory cancers. […]

The researchers found that incense use was associated with a statistically significant higher risk of cancers of the upper respiratory tract, with the exception of nasopharyngeal cancer. However, they observed no overall effect on lung cancer risk.

Those who used incense heavily also had higher rates of a type of cancer called squamous cell carcinoma, which refers to tumors that arise in the cells lining the internal and external surfaces of the body. The risk was seen in smokers and nonsmokers.

Study participants who used incense in their homes all day or throughout the day and night were 80 percent more likely than non-users to develop squamous cell carcinoma of the entire respiratory tract.

The link between incense use and increased cancer risk held when the researchers weighed other factors, including cigarette smoking, diet and drinking habits. (emphasis mine)

Incense: yet another surprising substance that weed is safer than.

“New Plastic flavor HOT POCKETS!!”

Yeah, I know that means jack shit, I just found it funny.  Anything to ignore the 24-hour establishment love-ins going on.  Only thing I’ll say about the current “news” is that my 2nd choice after Richardson (which would fulfill Dave Chappele’s thing about the first black president picking a latino as “insurance”) was Tim Kaine, if only because when people say “Obama-Kaine” it sounds like a new street drug.  Now back to my regularly scheduled not giving a fuck…

Jake Sullum, re: the “America is getting too mixed!” crowd:

We’ve become so accustomed to this arbitrary definition of “ethnic and racial minorities” that it’s easy to lose sight of how bizarre it is. Is there a single objective criterion that unites these particular ethnic and racial minorities while distinguishing them from all the excluded groups? Is there any rational reason why a descendant of Spaniards, say, should count as a real minority, whether or not his ancestors spent time in Latin America, while a descendant of Italians does not?

How quickly people forget those “no dogs, blacks or irish allowed” signs…

Submitted with minimal comment:

A Christian fundamentalist group is praying for a deluge to drown out Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in two weeks’ time.

Focus on the Family is asking for “abundant, torrential” downpours to flood Denver and silence Senator Obama when he accepts the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination on August 28.

“Would it be wrong to ask people to pray for rain of Biblical proportins,” asks an umbrella wielding Stuard Shepard in a video put out by the ultra conservative evangelical group. He asks for the rain to start “two minutes before the acceptance speech begins.”

It must be tiring to sustain such irrational fear, especially when you consider how obviously little shift if any could realistically come of Obama as president.  That groups’ slogan might as well be “my brain hurts”.

If you’re reading this, the world has not ended:

The cost remains high, and a good lawyer is essential. Yet despite complications, the idea of becoming a biological dad with help from a surrogate mother is gaining allure among gay men as the status of “married with children” grows ever more possible.

With same-sex marriage now legal in California even to nonresidents, and Massachusetts extending its 4-year-old gay-marriage policy to out-of-staters, in-wedlock parenting is suddenly a realistic option for gays and lesbians nationwide, even if their home state won’t recognize the union.

Fertility clinics and surrogacy programs report increased interest from gay men, while couples who already have children are getting married — or considering it — to provide more security for those kids. (emphasis mine)

Gee, that sounds rather…conventional, doesn’t it?

So despite the mass soiling of pants among the Right, and talk of deviancy and undermining the “tradition”, in fact gays are embracing it more than most of us straight folk.  Open gays are settling down and starting families, meanwhile republican congressmen are trolling airport toilets and chat rooms for random sex opportunities.  I’ve long held a belief concerning the War on Drugs that there was an element among statists who smoked and snorted their way to Mars in secret and merely didn’t want the taboo associated with doing so yanked away (for their own pleasure), now it seems it wouldn’t be far-fetched to suspect the same of anti-gay politics.  See, when the popular image of homosexuality fails to match the reckless stereotype they’ve been offering, then the operative question with future scandals will be their lack of tact, and not who they happen to be doing whatever with.  More directly, when gays are accepted to such a degree, where are America’s sexual hypocrites going to get a date?