World News Korner

Courtesy of Raw Story:

A school director in Pennsylvania is demanding that an environmental science textbook used in high schools be supplemented with a pamphlet about the “true science” of global warming.

Saucon Valley School Director and Tea Party Republican Bryan Eichfeld claimed “there’s a lot of clear propaganda…based on bad science” in the chapter, the point of which “is to teach our students to fear the future and to hate our modern industrial economy.”

He urged his fellow school directors to reject the textbook.

In a letter, Eichfeld claimed that Environmental Science “utterly fails to present the well-founded science of man-made Global warming skeptics,” and urged them to adopt “an attachment to the book that provides students with the excluded scientific evidence and data that challenge the global warming claims made in the book.”

If that reminds you of the attempts by Creationists to promote the "teach both sides of the science" argument in order to insert religious ideas into a public school classroom that is likely not an accident.

In fact climate science deniers have been inserting language attacking the science of global warming in the same published Christian textbooks that also attack evolution. (As you can see for yourself in this clip from Jesus Camp.)

Essentially once you have convinced people to doubt the findings of the vast number of scientists on one topic it is very simple to extrapolate that to the other scientific findings that you find objectionable.

However while the argument against evolution can be understood as push back from people who do not want their belief system undermined, it is much harder to understand what motivates average Americans to jump on the global warming denial train to stupidity.

Especially considering the consequences.

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WTF? They ALL lost?

Courtesy of Snipey Wiglashes Facebook page:

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Liberals?

As we pointed out last week, there were several potentially illegal political games afoot in Mississippi to motivate Democrat voters to "switch" over to the GOP for a day to help save a 42 year Republican member of Congress. (In other words Thad Cochran was better than Chris McDaniel at turning out the vote, including attracting Democrats to vote for him. You know, like Ronald Reagan.) On top of that, millions of dollars from out of state liberal billionaires like Mike Bloomberg poured in at the last minute on that same incumbent’s behalf. You have to ask yourself why? (They didn't want a lunatic like McDaniel in the Senate? Just a guess.) When a primary election is lost fairly, I am all for unifying behind the victor and joining forces to fight in November. (Yeah, right!) When an election is questionable, with potential legal violations, politics MUST be put aside and the irregularities MUST be fully investigated. Regardless of party, we owe it to voters and to democracy within our Republic. (You know I don't remember hearing any of this when Democrats supported Joe Miller in the Alaska Republican primary of 2010 because they thought that the Democratic challenger would have an easier time beating him than beating Lisa Murkowski. Where was this outrage then?) The integrity of the vote speaks directly to the integrity of those who serve and the trust we ask the American public to put in our institutions. I told Chris McDaniel last night that I stand with his effort to get to the bottom of this (Well he's doomed now.) – he needs to know average, but tremendously concerned, citizens want to make sure the integrity of last night’s results in Mississippi are verified. Voting shenanigans never cease to amaze, but they had better cease altogether for the sake of ethical elections. And any GOP “architect” behind these abhorrent voting shenanigans should be ashamed of this Pyrrhic victory for the establishment. (I cannot believe that a woman who ran as a Republican in Alaska, where the GOP breaks rules in virtually every single election, has the gall to to be "amazed" at any "shenanigans.") If we find out it's true that some of the characters alleged to have masterminded this Mississippi hijacking are the same ones who've tried to destroy other Republicans’ careers, they need to be taken to task and only be hired by unethical campaigns. Fool us once, shame on you; fool us twice, shame on us. And if any news organization ignores a free and fair elections issue like this, then whether left-leaning or center right, their silence will speak volumes. (Oooh, I bet every journalist is shaking in their boots over THAT threat.)

- Sarah Palin

Look, here's the thing. When candidates that Palin supports lose elections it makes her look like she has no idea what the fuck she is doing and does not inspire ignorant people to send her their hard earned money so that she can get more botox, pay Track to stay out of trouble, and hire people to help her right awesome Facebook posts like this one.

So rather than accept the fact that McDaniel got spanked by a more experienced, better connected, politician she is going to side with the butt hurt conservatives who just hate it when facts screw up how they want to see the world, and roar her pitiful roar, gnash her terrible teeth, roll her wonky eyes, and stamp her star spangled shoes, until she gets her way or is distracted by the next shiny new primary that comes along.

(By the way speaking of frustrating facts perhaps Palin needs to take a look at these facts.)

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Courtesy of the Providence Journal:

A Massachusetts man shot and killed a Pawtucket man and then turned the gun on himself after finding his ex-girlfriend in the other man's bedroom Monday night, according to Pawtucket police.

Robert Amado, 43, of 22 Plymouth St., in Carver, shot into the bedroom window of the first-floor apartment at 96 North Bend St. after seeing his ex-girlfriend and 45-year-old Timothy J. Robillard inside, said Maj. Arthur Martins.

Amado then forced his way in through the broken window after the couple, firing multiple times at Robillard, according to the police. Robillard was killed, and the woman fled.

Amado then fired a final shot, killing himself, Martins said. Officers called about gunfire and screams at the apartment at 10 p.m. found both men dead, Martins said. A revolver was next to Amado.

Despite what the NRA and ammosexuals want you to believe, THIS is how guns are most often utilized in this country.

They are used by angry, jealous, or suicidal people to take the life of another or their own, NOT by courageous patriots repelling invaders from a foreign land while standing on their back porch or fighting off a horde of bad guys determined to hurt their families or steal their flat screen TV's.

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As Hannity starts his interview with Palin the numbers are still coming in and Palin is not yet aware for certain that Chris McDaniel is toast. However Hannity asks her whether Cochran's attempt to woo liberals into voting for him will have any affect in the General, which suggests that he assumes Cochran will emerge victorious.

"Well you know as for the primary, and perhaps if it's true some shenanigans going on there, nothing should surprise you, but that's that old school politics where it's a bit of the status quo and that's got to go. (Oh look I rhymed!) It's very rare in a Republican primary that the candidate who promises to bring home the bacon, promising bigger government, which is requiring higher taxes, and more burdensome government, actually pulls it off in the primary. That's a rare thing. (Has this woman not been paying ANY attention this election cycle?) It'll be surprising, and yet or perhaps not, to find out what that cross over of Democrat voters, how that does impact the general."

Hannity then decides to focus on a rare Tea Party victory, and asks Palin for her take on Eric Cantor's loss to Dave Brat. (One of the few Teabaggers that Palin did NOT curse with an endorsement.)

"I..I..I think that it speaks for itself. That it is the constitutionalists, those who understand in the end that the Constitution is the blueprint towards a more perfect union and if politicians would follow it our country would be better off. And included in that, kinda that principle of following the Constitution, adopting the free market, adopting any policy that would allow thriving of the American people. The entrepreneurial spirit to once again grow. (WTF?) Cantor wasn't representing that. (Probably because that was all nonsensical babble.) He was representing the machine, the establishment, that had been there too long and was part then of that status quo problem, and refreshing to see new energy get in there, and not necessarily new ideas, because these are time tested truths that work for an economy and for security of a nation. And I think that..uh..you know we saw results that reflect that." (I'm thinking that Palin has no damn idea why Brat won, so she just throws out a bunch of conservative jargon in the hopes that it sounds like an answer to those not paying attention.)

Next Hannity asks Palin if she was serious when she threatened to leave the Republican party if it did not get its act together. (Wait, is she still actually IN the Republican party?)

(Palin starts off looking a little constipated.) "Well if Republicans are going to act like Democrats, then what's the use in getting all gung ho about getting more Republicans in there? We need people who understand the beauty of, the value of, allowing the free market to thrive. Otherwise our country is going to be continued to be over regulated, driving industry away, driving jobs away. We're going to be a bankrupt, fundamentally transformed country unless those who know what they're doing, and aren't going along just to get along with those in power, it being today the Democrats. That does no good. So yeah if Republicans aren't going to stand strong on the planks in our platform then it does no good to get all enthused about them anymore." (Seriously you have to watch the contortions that Palin puts her face through during this diatribe. She is riled up and med free here my friends.)

Hannity of course agrees wholeheartedly with Palin, and offers up his simplistic choices for fixing the party. That inspires Palin to exhume the rotting corpse of the Gipper.

"Well Ronald Reagan said that there are no easy answers, but there are simple answers if we have the courage to do what is morally right. And we need candidates willing to serve those who are courageous enough to buck the status quo and do what is courageously right. And then to implement those, pretty simple solutions that you just named, other..other solutions...how long did they go without even having a budget? You can't plan. You can't efficiently invest and have priorities that work if you don't have a budget and that's what we lived with." (Batten down the hatches boys, the wig's about to blow!)

Hannity then tosses Palin a question about her mention in Hillary's book, saying that David Plouffe is essentially saying that Hillary lied about being asked to attack Palin, and what she thinks about that. (Gee I bet I know what she thinks about that.)

"Well I've heard David Plouffe lie about other things, so I..uh..I don't put a lot of stock in what he says. But no the reference in that book I think was more evidence of this 'War on Women.' And certainly the first shot over the bow, in my campaign, it was shot by Barack Obama and his ilk. They're the ones that want to essentially oppress women by keeping them dependent on big brother government to take care of all their needs. Part of the 'War on Women?' They started it."

You know I am going to vote for Hillary, but I am NEVER going to forgive her for giving this idiot the ammunition to rail against the President in this way.

By the way my transcription can in no way actually illustrate the craziness oozing out from under Palin's stapled on wig in this interview. She is manic, she is raging, and she is making almost no damn sense.

And I can only imagine how much worse she would have become if she had realized that her candidate Chris McDaniel joined her other endorsee Oklahoma's T.W. Shannon as the most recent Palin picks to crash and burn into the political realities of 2014.

Not that McDaniel is ready yet to concede to the reality just yet.

I think there is little doubt that Palin has finally reached the rock bottom that we all predicted she would hit way back in 2009. Sure she is still flopping around defiantly trying to get her little broken legs back under her, but with recent political setbacks, and her desperate attempts to drum up business for Todd's new no-tell motel on the lake, it looks like Palin's star has just about blinked completely out of existence.

And it is about damn time too!

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He is just going around us like we are not even there to block his policies. Do you know how much that hurts?

Courtesy of Roll Call:

Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, told Republicans Tuesday he could have an announcement within days on whether the House will file a lawsuit against President Barack Obama, challenging the executive actions that have become the keystone of the administration.

The lawsuit could set up a significant test of constitutional checks and balances, with the legislative branch suing the executive branch for ignoring its mandates, and the judiciary branch deciding the outcome.

Boehner told the House Republican Conference during a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning that he has been consulting with legal scholars and plans to unveil his next steps this week or next, according to sources in the room.

Yeah how dare the President do his job, when the Republicans don't want him to do it!

To make their case the conservatives recently started passing around an email claiming that Obama had issued a whopping 923 executive order. However Snopes slapped that shit down, and reported that there were only a measly 147, which has now grown to a still quite measly 168.

(Seriously can't conservatives count?)

In fact as TPM reports President Obama is on the very low end for issuing executive orders:


Congressional Republicans threw a fit when President Barack Obama said during his State of the Union address this week that he would issue executive orders to forward policies if he couldn't reach an agreement with Congress.

"He's not a king," Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said, warning that House conservatives might just sue Obama if he followed through on his pledge. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) bemoaned Obama's "imperial presidency" in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.

But, as the chart above shows, Obama has been downright thrifty in issuing executive orders by historical standards.

His 168 executive orders come out to less than 0.1 for every day he's been in office. FDR, by comparison, was cranking out close to one per day as he faced the Great Depression and World War II.

So I would like ot assume that Boehner is simply throwing out some red meat for the paint chip eaters becasue if he seriously takes this bullshit to a judge he is going to get laughed right out of court.

On the other hand perhaps President Obama can sue these obstructionists for taking federal money and not even pretending to do their damn jobs!

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Jepthah apoplectic that his only child greeted him at the door, and now he has to set her ass on fire.

So the other day I happened across a passage in the Bible that damn near made my head explode.

The passage is Judges 11:30-39.

In that passage the protagonist Jepthah, a man driven from his home for being born illegitimately, is offered the opportunity to become the chieftain for the people of Gillead if he can defeat the Ammonites.

Jepthah is apparently not terribly sure of himself so he asks God to assist him in the battlefield, in exchange for a human sacrifice. And not any sacrifice mind you but "whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering."

Now mind you there is no verbal response from God cementing the deal, however after Jepthah returns victorious from the battle, he is greeted by his only daughter and immediately has a small nervous breakdown because it apparently never occurred to him that though she is his only child that she might be the person who would greet him at the door.

Jepthah becomes inconsolable so his daughter takes one for the team, "My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth."

All that she asks is that she be allowed two months to "bewail" the fact that she will die a virgin, and afterward she obediently returns at which time she is killed by her father, and her body burned.

Now keep in mind that this is offered up as an example of great morality in the Bible, much like the story of Job. Though in that parable God did at least spoke to Job AND spared his son.

However in this case Jepthah made the offer of the burnt sacrifice of a family member all on his own, assumed that the victory in battle meant that God had kept up his side of the bargain, and then slaughtered his only child to pay off a debt that most likely was all in his head.

This is why whenever anybody suggests to me that without God there can be no morality, I always answer that morality exists DESPITE the belief in God, not because of it.

In fact despite this horrible lesson on morality I would be willing to bet that there are very few Christians who would murder their children and burn their bodies as an offering to God, even if they believed with all their heart that God had intervened on their behalf in some way.

Like I have often said before, I am continually amazed that a religion based on Biblical stories of this type has gained the overwhelming acceptance that it enjoys today.

You know I really need to avoid reading the Bible for awhile. That thing gives me nightmares.

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Courtesy of Gawker:

Remember the middle-aged Fox News anchor who was arrested while intoxicated at an airport bar in St. Paul, Minnesota? You may have even seen Gregg Jarrett’s mugshot floating around last month. Now you can watch the (bizarrely rough) jailhouse altercation that put him in county jail.

The video above was taken by the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport’s dedicated police department, which originally detained Jarrett on May 21 after he was reported for erratic behavior by an airport bartender. The department recently released the video to Gawker under Minnesota’s Freedom of Information Act.

The surveillance footage shows Jarrett getting into an argument with a helmet-wearing cop named Mark Dorsey. After Jarrett protests his detention and calls Dorsey a “fucking stupid ass,” Dorsey approaches Jarrett, who stand ups and gets in Dorsey’s face. Dorsey then grabs the anchor, presses him up against a nearby wall, and slams him into the holding cell’s bench. It’s pretty rough stuff.

I had reported on this earlier and made the comment that I was not sure how you could NOT have a substance abuse problem and still work at Fox News, and now after watching this, and seeing Jarrett lose it on the air, it certainly does appear as if Jarrett does indeed have a substantial problem with alcohol.

I actually feel badly for him, as I come from a family where this kind of behavior is common place. In fact if somebody doesn't fall to the ground in s drunk stupor it's just not Christmas.

I just hope he gets the help that he needs before he ends up in a far worse situation. Though according to the police report Jarrett had just been released from “an alcohol/chemical dependency treatment facility” so maybe that is not an option for Mr. Jarrett.

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Courtesy of CS Monitor:

A White House Summit on Working Families Monday focused attention on a workplace policy where the US stands in a league of its own: America is the only advanced economy without a legal provision for paid maternity leave.

President Obama said it’s time to change that as well as other policies in a bid to make the American workplace better for families. He also called for steps to expand paid sick leave, flexible work schedules, and access to affordable child care.

The Monitor goes on to point out that polls show overwhelming support for paid maternity leave, and for businesses to provide flexible hours so that workers can meet family needs, so long as they still complete their work.

It is pretty clear that Obama is trying to create a template for Democrats to use in future elections, while also cornering the female vote.

I firmly believe that if President Obama were eligible for a third term he would win by an even larger margin than the last as he has certainly become the hands down champion for the workers, for the gay community, for women, and for just about every minority you could mention.

Essentially the only demographic that would come out strongly against him are middle aged men, Fundamentalists, and Ammosexuals.

And if Hillary is smart she will take up where the President left off and use this momentum to ride into an easy victory in 2016. However if she moves too far toward the middle in order to woo a demographic that will never vote for her anyway she risks losing the ground that Obama has won for the Democratic party.

I have to admit I do have that fear sometimes.

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