Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Insane Clown Party

Yes, that political party would be the Republicans. For instance there's this from GOP Senator Lindsay Graham:

"We won't be the last political party to overplay our hand. It might happen one day on the Democratic side. And if it did, would Republicans, for the good of the country, kinda give a little? We really did go too far. We screwed up. But their response is making things worse, not better."

Or perhaps this from GOP Representative Peter King:

"This party is going nuts. So many people I run into who are normal people -- and I hate to use that term -- they just can't understand what's going on. On this one they can't even see both sides. They just think Republicans are crazy. That's it. They see no justification for any of this."

"Even if this bill passed tonight, what would it have done? After shutting down the government for two and a half weeks, laying off 800,000 people, all the damage we caused, all we would end up doing was taking away health insurance from congressional employees. That's it? That's what you go to war for? That's what we shut down the United States government for?"

This government can't function when one-half of it is clinically insane. It's time to schedule an intervention for anyone you know that is even considering voting for the Insane Clown Party.






Monday, October 14, 2013

One Delta Ten Tango

14 october, 2013 -- TalkingPointsMemo

Discussing Sarah Palin at the "Million Vet March" (that drew about 500 people).

Maxaroo
"It’s time for the president to be honest with the American people for a change. Defaulting on our national debt is an impeachable offense, and any attempt by President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congress is also an impeachable offense," she wrote. I see Palin is as adept at Constitutional law as she was governing the State of Alaska (albeit briefly).

moodpost
Notice by this logic that no matter what he does, he should be impeached!!!


wbramh
Well sure, because either way he's still black.

Yep, wbramh pretty much nails the opposition to the wall. Either way he's still black - and there are millions of conservatives that simply can't handle that truth.

Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Louis Gohmert, Paul Ryan, etc., etc. One Delta Ten Tangos.




Thursday, October 10, 2013

Letter From An Antarctic Scientist

The whole letter can be found at DailyKos, but here are the closing paragraphs:

Mostly we are sad. Frustrated. Angry at our government and ashamed to be Americans.

We are part of an internationally codependent Antarctic system. What happens in the US, and therefore to us, could fuck science in Antarctica for so many stations and countries around the continent. McMurdo Station is a logistics hub for Australian, Russian, French, Italian, and New Zealand stations (and often others). When the French helicopter went down a few years ago? We sent one of our LC-130s to look. When other stations have a medevac, or a fire, or an emergency, we are often mustered to help them with our Air National Guard aircraft and crews. We get them from NZ to their stations for the summer. I cannot count how many times a 25+ strong crew of Russian or Italian or French or Australian station crew members have stayed with us for many days while they awaited the right weather window to fly to their own stations, delayed and housed and fed here. We work together. We are one big community when things go wrong here. And we are shutting down for the season.

So, I do not know what my future is. Few of us do.

But I do know one thing for sure: Who to blame.

Fuck the fucking Republicans for getting us into this mess with their intransigent selfish right wing ideological idiocy.

Fuck them for fucking up one of the most amazing things in the world, the US Antarctic Program.

Fuck. Them.

This government shutdown brought to you by the letters GOP.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Paid Shills

ESPN's investigative series, Outside the Lines, profiles a new book - League of Denial - about the National Football League's attempts to downplay and deny the amount, severity, and long-term consequences of concussions among professional football players.

Former NFL players number in the thousands - not the tens of millions of tobacco smokers affected by the tobacco industry's similar tactics. Still, it just drives home the point that industry-funded research should always be taken with a grain of salt. Oh hell, just pass me the entire salt shaker.

Of course we see the same thing in climate science; a few industry connected shills willing to put their names on anything in an attempt to shed doubt on reality and the work of real scientists. Fred Singer? Yeah, you're one of them. Heartland Institute? NIPCC? Yeah, they get to play the role of the sham committees the NFL organized to 'study' concussions.

I really can't feel any outrage. I mean, what would you expect? There's a lot of money involved and businesses and corporations will do practically anything to keep that revenue coming in. If it means tossing a few people aside along the way, slandering a few scientists, misleading their workers and the general public - well, so be it. We've seen this play often enough we should recognize it by now. The outrage would be if we're surprised by it.