Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Sitting at the Stars Hollow News Desk is kind of draining most times. It’s not really the 2 hours a day, which you get used to, it’s that the news is almost uniformly bad.
However since yesterday a few items have come to my attention that are at least somewhat encouraging.
Firstly, the Japanese "scientific research" whale hunt has been suspended about a month early and with only about 10% of the projected catch of 1000. Japan is blaming Sea Shepherd for creating “unsafe conditions” for its crews, but in fact the decision is probably based at least as much on declining demand for whale meat (over 6000 tons, a record, is in cold storage and annual per capita consumption is a mere 4 sashimi style slices a year) and growing international opposition including a suit at the International Court of Justice in The Hague from Australia, a top Japanese trading partner, that is expected to be adjudicated in 2013. This is a pleasant surprise after last year’s effort to raise quotas at the International Whaling Commission.
There are also rumors that David Patreus is going to be rotated out of his position as commander of the ISAF. The down side of this is that he’ll probably fail upwards to Chairman of the JCS, the up side of this is that it will provide an opportunity for Obama to break with Patreus’ strategy of endless occupation and airstrikes.
Well, we can hope.
Finally, even though the controversial Patriot Act Extension passed, it will only be for 3 months. As dday puts it-
Ultimately, this probably only means that the Senate will spend a week of debate three months from now and then extend the whole thing past the Presidential election. But it’s so rare that civil libertarians see even a minor speed bump in the rush to deprive liberty, and even with the three-month extension, that’s what this represents.
My niece works at a T-Shirt kiosk in the Mall and this year for Christmas she got me one that says-
Optimist
… like that does any good.
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seems like a good one. The general’s rotation is irrelevant, they will just wipe the amile off his face and get another Michael out of the warehouse. The Patriot Act just burns my ass, I got all joyous about Dennis and the atlas shrugged kid getting our habeaus corpus back, so that’s not going to happen.
Tell you the truth lately the news is so bad that it’s hard to believe your not watching a really nasty dark scifi horror movie with an ending you just know is going to be worse, so bad you are compelled to leave the room and have a smoke. Now that I have no TV and I took Huffpo, my portal to AP or the NYT, off the toolbar, I have to read and find the real news and although I never believed the TV news it’s easier to see why some people prefer the filtered and fictitious interpretations instead of the real thing. I might get Dish or Direct in May? when KO returns, interested to see if Al Gore’s station develops into real news. Plus I really got hooked on Boardwalk Empire.
The general – I’m not so sure of. Obama seems to think Afghanistan is a SNAFU. I tend to think it’s a FUBAR.
(that’s Situation Normal, all Fouled Up and Fouled up Beyond All Repair) (you may substitute other words for fouled).
I think a “good news” feature here would be good. There IS some light amid the gloom.
Aren’t you Mr. Sunshine today? Finally comin’ around to American exceptionalism?
But oddly enough, I feel jealous of Belgium. They haven’t had a government since last June’s elections. How AWESOME would that be! And wouldn’t ya know it, here is how one socialist wants to ruin the fun with a “sex strike”: