Crappy health, crappy news, crap crap crap

Man, what *really* chews holes in your day/week is combinatorial childcare illness/breakdown. Sigh. Anyway, here are some things I feel compelled to blog, while simultaneously not wanting to blog any of them...

• The Obama Administration is working to undermine Miranda protections, even for U.S. citizens. All of these guys seem to think that nobody scarier than themselves will ever be in charge, and thus they are cavallier with the things that protect average folks who might find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. For my part, this makes me wonder who the Good Guys are anymore.
  
  
• More and more folks want me to join Facebook, even as it's getting less and less private as time passes. The difference between the first and last images there seems to me to represent the difference between what people *think* they're getting from social networks (the ability to socialize only with the people they want to) and what they're *actually* getting (more and more of their information made available to every search engine and third-party business interest). Appalling.
  
  
• Pediatricians come out in favor of a minimalist female genital mutilation procedure. Ok, better than a radical clitorectomy and the like, but it's hard for me to be excited by any casual endorsement of "nicking"...
  
  
• The media keeps talking about the recovery underway, but it's striking how little impact it has had on unemployment, which is not only at high rates but also for shocking durations. Eventually the carnage on Main Street is going to trickle up to Wall Street, however well insulated...
  
  
• Just to top off all the chipperness here, a little cartoon that captures the way that I take Arizona's immigration craziness personally -- not because it affects *me* right now, but because it reflects badly on what we think our nation is about. Not pretty times.