Happy New Year!

Drink in moderation



Behave yourself



Make sure you get home safely

Best and worst and things in between...

What the second amendment is actually all about.

How to treat PTSD.

And I thought fuzzy caterpillars were cute!

Imagine if you were stuck in a room with a blank computer and a floppy....

Making the 'War on Terror' forever unwinnable..

The best photos of 2012.

Finding buried treasure in the U.K.

Deliberately destroying the post office

In 2005 the then Republican controlled Congress passed bill HR22 requiring the Post Office pay $5 billion dollars a year, over a ten year period, for healthcare cost 75 years in the future. No other part of government or any other corporation in the world has to do this. The post office is the only part of government that funds itself. It funds itself my selling stamps, express mail, money orders and many other services. It does not take American taxpayer money. This bill was passed to bankrupt the postal service so it could be privatized broken into pieces and sold to the highest bidder. 

These $5 billion dollar a year payments started in 2006. In 2006 then President George W. Bush appointed four members to the five member Postal Board of Governors who selects the Postmaster General to runs the postal service. Those four members appointed by President George W. Bush were (Thurgood Marshall Jr., Mickey Barnett, James Bilbray and Louis Giuliano). Only one member Dennis Toner was appointed to the board by President Obama (usa.gov).The Postal Board of Governors selected Patrick Donahoe (usps.gov) as Postmaster General. 

Today the 2012 Republican controlled Congress, the Postal Board of Governors and Postmaster General Donahoe are at it again. They want to take all California Postal Service driving jobs from San Francisco to San Diego and give them to outside private contractors by the end of 2012. Postmaster General Donahoe claims this is being done because California postal diesel vehicles don't meet air pollution requirements. The APWU (American Postal Workers Union) offered to modify these vehicles at no cost to the Postal Service. So far, Postmaster General Donahoe has not responded to the APWU offer. This proves money is not the issue. This is another attempt to take government jobs and give them to outside private contracting companies whose main goal is making money not serving the needs of the American people.

Survivalist gear to ecosystems in upheaval....

Survivalist gear on the cheap: clever use of pill bottles.  And straws.

King Richard III’s medieval inn recreated by archaeologists

Sir Gwaine and the Green Knight.

Looking for someone ... anyone to blame for the Sandy Hook school shooting.. anything but guns... Must be because of women.

Scientists: Mealworms could replace beef, chicken as Earth’s source of protein

Report: Ecosystems in Upheaval, Biodiversity in Collapse

New study documenting climate change shows sweeping changes happening faster than previously recorded and bringing 'cascading effects'

So good to hear in this era of bad news..

Richard Engle is safe.  Thank goodness.

The list of names

Of the school shooting.

Update:  What the teachers did.

Shut down the damned pump

Digby.

School Shooting in Connecticut ..

Dear god, those poor little punkins.

From West Point to Frankenfoods....

West Point cadet left because of religious oppression.

Pesticide Action Network.

Right-wing extremism:  armed and dangerous.

Sunportal makes pipes that bring sunlight inside buildings.  And a nanomesh triples solar cell efficiency.

The drought will be worse than Hurricane Sandy...

A good doggie and his charge:



How to be clear about what the 'Right to Work' means:



Exxon hates your children:



Ed Asner explains our failing economy:



Bill Maher and Frankenfoods:

From books to breasts

Or the lack thereof... Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum

Schools in America are to drop classic books such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye from their curriculum in favour of 'informational texts'. American literature classics are to be replaced by insulation manuals and plant inventories in US classrooms by 2014. A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace. Books such as JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird will be replaced by "informational texts" approved by the Common Core State Standards. Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California's Invasive Plant Council. The new educational standards have the backing of the influential National Governors' Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and are being part-funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Monsanto in India.


A pale blue dot:



Detroit, then and now.

Early onset breast cancer survivors.  (NSFW) Showing the faces and bodies of those who have dealt with the disease.

Update:  Solar Electric Light Fund.

SELF's mission is to design and implement solar energy solutions to assist the 1.5 billion people living in energy poverty with their economic, educational, health care and agricultural development. Since 1990, SELF has completed projects in more than 20 countries and pioneered unique applications of solar power such as for drip irrigation in Benin, health care in Haiti, telemedicine in the Amazon rainforest, online learning in South Africa and microenterprise development in Nigeria.

The Landfillharmonic

Saving kids one landfill instrument at a time...

 
Landfill Harmonic | Juliana Penaranda-Loftus & Alejandra Nash from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

From here to there...

The Republican War on Women continues... apparently this last election didn't mean anything.

Fix the debt?  Uh huh.

Do politicians really worry about the deficit?....



Tom Tomorrow and Cliff Notes.  More on the 'fiscal cliff'.

Garden Path Sentences

Fracking chemical used in US linked to organ damage

Organic compounds on Mars.

FDR's speech:

Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said: "Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society." One sure way to determine the social conscience of a Government is to examine the way taxes are collected and how they are spent. And one sure way to determine the social conscience of an individual is to get his tax-reaction. Taxes, after all, are the dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society. As society becomes more civilized, Government—national, State and local government—is called on to assume more obligations to its citizens. The privileges of membership in a civilized society have vastly increased in modern times. But I am afraid we have many who still do not recognize their advantages and want to avoid paying their dues. It is only in the past two generations that most local communities have paved and lighted their streets, put in town sewers, provided town water supplies, organized fire departments, established high schools and public libraries, created parks and playgrounds—undertaken, in short, all kinds of necessary new activities which, perforce, had to be paid for out of local taxes.

Friday Cat

Says it all....

 

Killing the world

With corn.

In growing it.  Watering it from the ancient aquifer.  Overplanting it. Making unnecessary ethanol with it.  Poisoning people with high fructose corn syrup.   Forcing grass eating cows to eat corn which does untold things to their physiology and to the meat we eat.  Misusing the land.  Creating the Gulf dead zone.

When you privatize prisons

You'll do anything to fill your cells.

Angry rich white men

Who think they should be entitled to run the country.

Mitt Romney:

It Gets Worse for Mitt Romney as He is Named the Least Influential Person of 2012

Romney’s lasting legacy isn’t that he was at the helm when the Republican Party finally crashed and burned on a national scale. This honestly wasn’t Romney’s fault. It doesn’t matter who the Republicans might have nominated, they would have lost in 2012. (Having a party platform that alienates women, African-Americans, Latinos, and young voters tends to have that sort of impact on the electoral bottom line.) Mitt Romney’s lasting legacy is that he confirmed to the rest of America what it had long suspected. Those old, rich, conservative white guys who are looking to buy elections view the rest of the country with contempt. When these men say they want their country back, they really mean that they think they are entitled to run the show. Women belong in the kitchen. Young people should stop being lazy and get a job. African Americans are invisible, and Latinos are criminals who should be prosecuted and/or (self) deported. Naming Mitt Romney the least influential person of 2012 isn’t kicking a man when he is down. It is telling the truth about a presidential nominee who had done so little, yet felt entitled to so much.

Top Romney Adviser Brags About Losing Poor, Minority Voters To Obama

John McCain and his attack on Susan Rice:

John McCain sounded awfully chastened yesterday. Gone was the bluster of doing “everything in my power to block” Susan Rice from a position she has yet to be nominated for. He didn’t question her competence. The rage gave way to this Sunday morning walkback: “I think she deserves the ability and the opportunity to explain herself and her position, just as she said. But, she’s not the problem. The problem is the president of the United States.” 

I doubt McCain is done being an angry, bitter man who still hasn’t forgiven Rice for her attack on him during the 2008 presidential campaign. But someone must have told him that trashing an accomplished, relatively young woman of color who wasn’t even remotely responsible for what happened in Benghazi is just not a good look these days. Maybe McCain underestimated how many people had Rice’s back, from the Congressional Black Caucus to the president himself — just as his fellow party members had underestimated the power of the voting bloc they commanded on Nov. 6.

And another variation:

4. Because McCain is being a jackass—and Obama is sick of it. Arguably more than any other national figure, the senior senator from Arizona is driven in every aspect of his public behavior by personal pique. In the wake of the 2000 Republican nomination fight, when he believed Bush and his campaign had defeated him by nefarious means, McCain lunged to the center and became one of the sharpest thorns in the side of the new president from his own party. In the wake of the 2008 election, when he was soundly thumped by a Democratic challenger whom he regarded as a neophyte and a pretender whose experience and valor were no match for his own, McCain immediately shed all traces of mavericky independence and became one of Obama’s fiercest critics from the right. Now into McCain’s crosshairs has come Rice, who routinely stripped the bark off him four years ago as one of Obama’s most quotable surrogates. (“His tendency is to shoot first and ask questions later; it is dangerous, and we can’t afford four more years of this reckless foreign policy” is just one vintage example of the form.) No one who knows McCain believes he has forgotten these brickbats or that they are not a substantial part of what is motivating him now. Nor does anyone close to Obama not suspect that, after four years of McCain’s truculence, he’s had quite enough of it, thanks, and is indeed sorta spoiling for a fight.

Pastafarians unite!

Cats in heaven....

Cat heaven: A town in Japan.

How much does a penny cost?  To carry in your car?  To pick up off the ground?

Fascinating blog I found.

Go back!

I hope this helps a kid feeling oppressed and hopeless:



Oh no.  This wonderful duet has apparently been tied to the horrid book '50 Shades of Crap'... listen to it before it's melded forever to that movie/book/garbage.

Monday meandering about the net...

bed bugs.

Answering the silly question anti-evolutionists ask.

This is too cute.

Paul Krugman warns us about the current 'Republican brain':

What was Mr. Rubio’s complaint about science teaching? That it might undermine children’s faith in what their parents told them to believe. And right there you have the modern G.O.P.’s attitude, not just toward biology, but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith, suppress the evidence. 

The most obvious example other than evolution is man-made climate change. As the evidence for a warming planet becomes ever stronger — and ever scarier — the G.O.P. has buried deeper into denial, into assertions that the whole thing is a hoax concocted by a vast conspiracy of scientists. And this denial has been accompanied by frantic efforts to silence and punish anyone reporting the inconvenient facts. But the same phenomenon is visible in many other fields. The most recent demonstration came in the matter of election polls. Coming into the recent election, state-level polling clearly pointed to an Obama victory — yet more or less the whole Republican Party refused to acknowledge this reality. Instead, pundits and politicians alike fiercely denied the numbers and personally attacked anyone pointing out the obvious; the demonizing of The Times’s Nate Silver, in particular, was remarkable to behold.

Not conservative enough, obviously.

No way...

Is anyone going to get me to go to the mall... nope. Update 11/25: This pic is appropriate for the season.

From nice to nasty.

Mr. Rogers.

Temple Grandin.

Your nose may save your legs.

Barefoot college.

Prepping for disaster.

Catholicism and women.

Israelis, the new Nazis:

"Israel was born out of Jewish Terrorism" Tzipi Livnis Father was a Terrorist" Astonishing claims in the House of Parliament. SIR Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland. During a Commons debate on the fighting in Gaza, he urged the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel. Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed. "My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians." He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants." He accused the Israeli government of seeking "conquest" and added: " They are not simply war criminals, they are fools."

From sex to bombs...

Interesting take on the latest sex scandal.

Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy.

McCain is still sore he isn't president.

Run away, run away!!

The perils of being a woman online.

Did Anonymous save the election by blocking Rove's hacking minions?

Verdun, France has a Forbidden Forest filled with 12 million unexploded bombs from WWI.

Usual Thursday....

First the parrots...They are plotting to take over the world!

What can happen to women denied abortions.

Scary muslim pictures.

Mass shooting for the last 30 years... brought to you by the NRA, the gun companies, and a cowardly Congress.

High Fructose Corn Syrup... apparently not even related to corn anymore:

While “trans-fat free” and “no MSG” are widely misused in the food world, nothing seems to come close to the ultra popular “natural.” With no definitive guidance from the FDA as to the meaning of the term, food manufactures slap it on products with abandon. Author and blogger Bruce Bradley, a 15-year veteran of the food product marketing world, says, “There is no FDA definition of ‘Natural,’ and in that vacuum, processed food companies have filled the void with their own, self-serving interpretations.” As an example, Bradley cites high fructose corn syrup, which he describes as “anything but natural…the result of an extraordinarily intensive process involving a series of enzymatic and chemical reactions. In fact, as one pro-HFCS group states, ‘the corn undergoes so much processing, and the products of the processes are so removed from corn that there is no detectable corn DNA present in HFCS.’” As the litigation lingers on, it will hopefully have the side effect of informing all those still clueless shoppers out there that what they see advertised about a food may bear little or no relationship to what they actually get – and in that way, can and will “benefit the public” after all.

Belly buttons.

Doggies and video game dragons.

Teaching girls to become engineers.

But... it's too simple and involves math...

Robert Reich on Facebook:

I hope the President starts negotiations over deficit reduction from the strongest possible position. After all, he won the election. 

The consensus (Simpson-Bowles, Congressional Budget Office, Republican leaders, White House) is we need to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over the next ten years. 

Here's how. 

First, raise taxes on the rich -- who are now richer than they've ever been, and taking home a larger share of total income and wealth than in over 80 years. 

Sixty years ago, Americans earning over $1 million in today's dollars paid 55.2 percent of it in income taxes, after taking all deductions and credits. If they were taxed at that rate now, they'd pay at least $80 billion more annually -- which would reduce the budget deficit by about $1 trillion over the next decade. That's a quarter of the $4 trillion in deficit reduction right there. 

A 2% surtax on the wealth of the richest one-half of 1 percent would bring in another $750 billion over the decade. A one-half of 1 percent tax on financial transactions would bring in an additional $250 billion over the decade. 

Add all this up and we get $2 trillion over ten years -- fully half of the deficit-reduction goal. Raise the capital gains rate to match the rate on ordinary income, and cap the mortgage interest deduction and tax-free employer health care at $20,000 a year, and that's another $500 billion over ten years. Bottom line: $2.5 trillion in additional revenue, and that's not including spending cuts. 

Now, for spending cuts: Cut military spending by 10 percent and we save over $500 billion. Eliminate special tax subsidies to oil and gas, price supports to big agriculture, subsidies for ethanol, tax breaks and research subsidies for Big Pharma, and indirect subsidies to the biggest banks on Wall Street, and we save close to another $1 trillion over ten years. 

Bingo: $4 trillion -- without raising taxes on the middle class, without cutting Social Security or Medicare and Medicaid, without cutting education or infrastructure, without reducing programs for the poor. 

Are you with me?

Don't give in to blackmail, Mr. President.

Paul Krugman:

So what should he do? Just say no, and go over the cliff if necessary. 

It’s worth pointing out that the fiscal cliff isn’t really a cliff. It’s not like the debt-ceiling confrontation, where terrible things might well have happened right away if the deadline had been missed. This time, nothing very bad will happen to the economy if agreement isn’t reached until a few weeks or even a few months into 2013. So there’s time to bargain. 

More important, however, is the point that a stalemate would hurt Republican backers, corporate donors in particular, every bit as much as it hurt the rest of the country. As the risk of severe economic damage grew, Republicans would face intense pressure to cut a deal after all. 

Meanwhile, the president is in a far stronger position than in previous confrontations. I don’t place much stock in talk of “mandates,” but Mr. Obama did win re-election with a populist campaign, so he can plausibly claim that Republicans are defying the will of the American people. And he just won his big election and is, therefore, far better placed than before to weather any political blowback from economic troubles — especially when it would be so obvious that these troubles were being deliberately inflicted by the G.O.P. in a last-ditch attempt to defend the privileges of the 1 percent. 

Most of all, standing up to hostage-taking is the right thing to do for the health of America’s political system. 

So stand your ground, Mr. President, and don’t give in to threats. No deal is better than a bad deal.

Ooof.

Well, THAT was a lot of kerfuffle.  Can we have some peace and quiet for a bit now?

Henri - Politique

Mais... meow.

Vote. Then stuff to look at after voting.

The complete youtubed War of the Roses (1965)... all eight hours of it.  Not sure if I want to start....

Bulldozing Mecca?

Chart to keep track of all the Obama conspiracies...

Looks like the Germans won....

Uh oh....VOYAGER 1 DETECTS WEIRDNESS AT SOLAR SYSTEM EDGE

Wow, China.

Time-lapse video: Space shuttle Endeavour’s trek across L.A.

Sandy vs Katrina

Krugman states the obvious:

The point is that after Katrina the government seemed to have no idea what it was doing; this time it did. And that’s no accident: the federal government’s ability to respond effectively to disaster always collapses when antigovernment Republicans hold the White House, and always recovers when Democrats take it back. 

Consider, in particular, the history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

Under President George H. W. Bush, FEMA became a dumping ground for unqualified political hacks. Faced with a major test in the form of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the agency failed completely. 

Then Bill Clinton came in, put FEMA under professional management, and saw the agency’s reputation restored. Given this experience, you might have expected George W. Bush to preserve Mr. Clinton’s gains. But no: he appointed his campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh, to head the agency, and Mr. Allbaugh immediately signaled his intention both to devolve disaster relief to the state and local level and to downgrade the whole effort, declaring, “Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.” After Mr. Allbaugh left for the private sector, he was replaced with Michael “heckuva job” Brown, and the rest is history. 

Like Mr. Clinton, President Obama restored FEMA’s professionalism, effectiveness, and reputation. But would Mitt Romney destroy the agency again? Yes, he would. As everyone now knows — despite the Romney campaign’s efforts to Etch A Sketch the issue away — during the primary Mr. Romney used language almost identical to Mr. Allbaugh’s, declaring that disaster relief should be turned back to the states and to the private sector. 

The best line on this, I have to admit, comes from Stephen Colbert: “Who better to respond to what’s going on inside its own borders than the state whose infrastructure has just been swept out to sea?” 

Look, Republicans love to quote Ronald Reagan’s old joke that the most dangerous words you can hear are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Of course they’ll do their best, whenever they’re in power, to destroy an agency whose job is to say exactly that. And yes, it’s hypocritical that the right-wing news media are now attacking Mr. Obama for, they say, not helping enough people.

One more term....

Sung to the music of Les Miserables.

Actually white landowners are the only men who count..

Apparently no one else counts.

Algae? I think we could manage that....

Biofuel breakthrough: Quick cook method turns algae into oil

ANN ARBOR—It looks like Mother Nature was wasting her time with a multimillion-year process to produce crude oil. Michigan Engineering researchers can "pressure-cook" algae for as little as a minute and transform an unprecedented 65 percent of the green slime into biocrude. "We're trying to mimic the process in nature that forms crude oil with marine organisms," said Phil Savage, an Arthur F. Thurnau professor and a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan.

Finally, you can see who is blogging this post....

Eek!

Bits and pieces...

Making sure that Romney wins Ohio the Republican way... by voter registration fraud.

Being blackmailed into voting for Romney.  (Krugman)

Air New Zealand and the Hobbit

HFCS or high fructose corn syrup.

What to do when your car falls into the drink.

Making sure the revolution happens.

How does the Queen answer the phone?

What do you do for a friend who is facing death?

Hurricanes hardly happen...

Reddit has a discussion about emergency and hurricane preparedness.

Bloomberg News: Romney ‘rented’ Mormon church’s exemption to defer taxes for 15 years

SOTP!

One thing about field biology.... itching.

Sweden wants your trash.

Friday cats on Monday:  Grumpy cat gets tickled.

Cat turns archaeologist.

Wow...

Ann Romney: "Throw out" the American public education system.

Bring on the elitist private schools and the uneducated masses....

That's it, you're going down...

Cat straight from Reddit.

The war against women

Has been going on for a long time around the world.  In some places, women face down death threats. In others, legislation to control those naughty lady parts is constantly brought to the vote, pushed forward by those who have no understanding of women's physiology.

Because apparently we are now celebrating the Era of Stupidity.

Update 10/26:  sexism is everywhere.

And Malala Yousafzai is able to walk, talk, and can remember.

The horrific facts about rape.

Gee, how strange...

Spraying pesticides kills bees.  Who'd a thunk?  (And how many times do we have to rediscover this fact to do something about it?)

Have the Romneys already purchased the Oval Office?

Corrected link.  Petition to Eric Holder to investigate Tagg Romney's ownership of Ohio's voting machines.

Update 10/21: More on the Romney ownership of electronic voting companies.

This is Tagg Romney who would like to take a swing at Obama.

Let the auto companies go bankrupt... but let Romney make a ton ... several tons of money from it first.

Why does Romney lie so much?  Blatantly lie?  Obviously lie?

Republican voter registration fraud.

Science is cool...

Spray-on solar panels.

British engineers produce amazing 'petrol from air' technology:

A small company in the north of England has developed the “air capture” technology to create synthetic petrol using only air and electricity. 

The company, Air Fuel Synthesis, then uses the carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methanol which in turn is passed through a gasoline fuel reactor, creating petrol. 

Company officials say they had produced five litres of petrol in less than three months from a small refinery in Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside. 

The fuel that is produced can be used in any regular petrol tank and, if renewable energy is used to provide the electricity it could become “completely carbon neutral”. 

Experts tonight hailed the astonishing breakthrough as a potential “game-changer” in the battle against climate change and a saviour for the world’s energy crisis. 

The technology, presented to a London engineering conference this week, removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 

The “petrol from air” technology involves taking sodium hydroxide and mixing it with carbon dioxide before "electrolysing" the sodium carbonate that it produces to form pure carbon dioxide. 

Hydrogen is then produced by electrolysing water vapour captured with a dehumidifier.

El Nino will make your state drier than usual this rainy season... or very very soggy.  (Sorry about that, Florida).  But there is no signs of global warming.  Nope nope ignore that.

Curiosity digs up Martian dirt.  Planets in perspective.

The Onion tries to be a satire blog

But is always just a bit too close to the truth....

Dump Citizens United

Reducing the debate to four words...

Binders full of women.

While the debate rages on...

Quick!  Which way did they go?

Ad your voice to help reelect Obama.  And speaking of ads, this is fun.

Psychopaths:  business men and politicians

The physics of medieval viking sword fighting.

They are coming for your birth control... because hussies should get knocked up and then shamed, shunned and finally stoned in the town square.  Because God is love.

DNA from a descendant of Richard III will help identify the bones found below a English car park.

Saturday Caturday

Liars and Truth-tellers

Tumbler overtaking blogging?

Bernie Sanders speaks the truth.

Counting the lies:



The entitlement of the Mormon male.  So apparently lying and ignoring his church's precepts to gain power is ok.  But it's fine, because he was a severely conservative ... no, liberal...no, conservative... governor.



Obama will come into his own?  I do hope so.

Mars panorama.

Silly brain.

The Five-Year-Old's Guide to the Galaxy

What could possibly go wrong?

Bain-Controlled Company Owns 2012 Voting Machines

Food fakery:

Tongue tampering:

To get an idea of just how high tech such stuff really is, here is bit of an explanation of how it all works from FoodNavigator-usa.com: “Building on work by scientists who have successfully cloned human taste receptors for sweet, bitter and umami tastes, Senomyx uses high-throughput biological screening techniques to evaluate millions of molecules to identify which substances bind to specific taste receptors.” 

Back in the EU, however, an explanatory memo issued by the European Commission to explain its list of “approved flavouring substances,” says that to be authorized a flavoring must not “mislead the consumer.” And that would seem to raise the question of whether there’s any real difference between misleading the consumer and misleading the consumer’s tongue.

FDR

Let me warn you and let me warn the Nation against the smooth evasion which says, “Of course we believe all these things; we believe in social security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them—we will do more of them we will do them better; and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.” But, my friends, these evaders are banking too heavily on the shortness of our memories. No one will forget that they had their golden opportunity—twelve long years of it. Remember, too, that the first essential of doing a job well is to want to see the job done. Make no mistake about this: the Republican leadership today is not against the way we have done the job. The Republican leadership is against the job's being done. — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936

Jon Stewart uses this to expose Romney.

Little bits

A woman travels across Antarctica alone.

Oh you Brits. Humor on the Underground. And you can tell a lot about the Brits (and everybody else) by the way they like their eggs cooked.

The world's angriest cat.

Made with a small multirotor helicopter, a video of Hammershus.

The attempt to silence a brave voice.  Malala Yousafzai seems to have survived the attack, but I don't know in what condition.  An update 10/10.

They've found something.... something weird and small... on Mars.  Update10/10:  benign plastic?  Update 10/11: Rats, benign plastic.

WTF??

Halliburton’s missing nuclear waste found alongside Texas highway

A debate

I finally got around to watching it... and they both did well.

  Update: Video removed by user, etc, etc. Will replace when I can find the full hour and a half of the debate, but most have been pulled.

 (I had a hell of a time getting the sound high enough, finally rewiring my speakers to the old ones that go up to eleven.)

How do you debate someone using the Gish Gallop technique?

The definition of Gish Gallop.. which sounds like something you experience after eating bad food, basically is unloading so many lies all at once that the opponent cannot attack any of them.  It lets you win the debate (especially if the other one is not ready for it) but you've given the other side enough ammo for a zillion negative campaign ads in the end.

 

It's suggested that Romney's debate win probably made the House stay Republican, even if he himself loses the election. Only time will tell....

Giving Romney the bird

Don't vote....

Unless you care about your life and what happens in it.

Poll takers

Problems? What problems?

Concern over Sri Lanka kidney disease

Incurable ailment linked by researchers to farming chemicals prompts calls for controls on pesticide use.

Who cares about the poor anyway? U.S. military’s secret experiment sprayed radiation on low-income housing

Droning on takes on a whole new meaning...

Can we just start calling them lies now? At Last Night’s Debate: Romney Told 27 Myths In 38 Minutes  and 10 Pieces Of Proof That Mitt Romney Thinks You're Stupid and Rachel Maddow is keeping track and David Corn notes Romney's flip on the 47 percent.

If you don't support this, you aren't against abortion.  You're against sex.

Abortion rates plummet with free birth control.

Ducks that had been kept in a pen all their lives are introduced to water for the first time. You think you have problems....

This is worrisome....

Exit Polls Canceled In 19 States

Update... there is no voter fraud, so Republicans will MAKE voter fraud happen: Sproul Says GOP Had Him Disguise Involvement in Voter Registration Scandal

Life in the background

Now that the first debate is over....

The sunken ancient Greek ship that had a 'computer' gets a revisit... they're going back to see what other wonderful things can be found.  (I love this kind of archaeology.)

Your hate and fear of the 'other' is used to manipulate you.

Bubbles...

What could possibly go wrong? To quote Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park,"...scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

Pesticide use rises as genetically modified crops backfire 

Look, Romney! A poor person using the ER... and being told they could not help her.  Obamacare saved her.

Marijuana helps cure cancer? It will be made only if the big Pharmaceutical corporations can control it:

Marijuana And Cancer: Scientists Find Cannabis Compound Stops Metastasis In Aggressive Cancers

Darrel Issa is out to sea.  But we knew that already.

Anchor teaches a bully a lesson

Cats, the Moon and everything in between

Reddit asks:  What is something your current or past employer would NOT want the world to know about their company?  The responses about banking, food service, recycling, chemical waste, crony drunks on the job... makes one want to dig a hole and hide in it....

Hell cat.

Mars had water.  But does that mean it had life?  And how about a super computer on the MoOOooon!?

Bees, birds and butterflies:



Reasons to vote Republican:



Who will stop the gun violence?

Stephen Barton survived the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado. But 12 others didn’t. Watch his personal message asking President Obama and Governor Romney to offer their plans on how they will end gun violence, and join him by signing our petition.

Like... you know...



The worm from the CENTER OF THE EARRRRRRTH.....!1!!1!1!

The definition of voter fraud to a Republican

Is a Democrat voting.  but the only voter fraud we've seen are Republican operatives getting caught in the act.

  Will 9 GOP Governors Electronically Flip Romney Into the White House?

Stop it!

Being clueless and rich is hard!

Burns?  Or Romney?

Darrell Issa hits the big time...

Dealing with a troll.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

In Arizona, where anti-abortion crusaders have passed some of the most restrictive women’s health laws in the country, abortion rates seemed to have increased. 

And by the way, good Christian women? Shut up.

High Fructose Corn Syrup must be called that, not the 'disguised' name of Corn Sugar.

Maybe the Earth had two moons at one time?

Because your voice needs to be heard

Register to vote!

I'm sure this would be Rep. Akin approved....

(NSFW)

Need voter ID quickly? Buy a gun.

So says Sarah Silverman: (NSFW)



via Steve Bates.

Big mouth

Small dick.

Update 9/25... comic.

Squirrel pie

Somebody got my blog when they googled "can you work as a military contractor with bipolor (sic) disorder?" ... the scary thing is, probably yes.

Australia observes the emperor has no clothes.  And he lies.

Four years and the Arctic ice will be gone in the summer months...

Romney shuts up a teacher he had asked for advice.  And Daily Kos exposes the real Romney.

Squirrel in the kitchen!

Thor's day

How not to critique comics.

Bees and pesticides do not mix.

The problem with The Onion is that it is always too close to the truth;  take this one on Romney.  And now Romney has exposed what he really thinks and has pissed off the 47%....



West Wing. How we wish politics would be and how politicians would act ... as if they had our best interests at heart.  So here's an ad with the actors playing themselves, acting as we would have real politicians act, standing up for the good guys:



Speaking of good guys... you always need a bad guy for balance.  Darth Karl Rove.

Yum yum.  Monsanto's genetically modified corn causes tumors in rats.

Arctic thaw perhaps sped up by oil and shipping?

Facebook messages are protected speech.

Oh look...

We have found an interesting rock.

Chaos on Bulls**t Mountain

(sorry about the ad in front)

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

ARRRrrrrrrrrrr....

Talk like a pirate day... or maybe not.



Damned females getting all the jobs!  Or something.

Dogs.

Roman tile floor found in Turkey.

Russia has a huge site of diamonds... enough to flood the world with sparklies.  And drop the bottom out of the diamond business....

Put a burka on it!

Soon, EVERYONE will have a giant marble to run their electronics, their house, their car.....



The Bible is more violent than the Koran.

Update:  Found over via Bryan of Why Now?'s place:


Top Ten Pickup lines for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day

(We came up with these in an effort to interest The Other Dave (Letterman) in TLAPD. His staff liked 'em, but alas, his show was"dark" the week of Sept. 19.)

10 . Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why my Roger is so Jolly?

9. Have ya ever met a man with a real yardarm?

8. Come on up and see me urchins.

7. Yes, that is a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you.

6. I'd love to drop anchor in your lagoon.

5. Pardon me, but would ya mind if I fired me cannon through your porthole?

4. How'd you like to scrape the barnacles off of me rudder?

3. Ya know, darlin’, I’m 97 percent chum free.

2. Well blow me down?

And the number one pickup line for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day is …

1. Prepare to be boarded.

Bonus pickup lines (when the ones above don't work, as they often won't)

They don’t call me Long John because my head is so big.

You’re drinking a Salty Dog? How’d you like to try the real thing?

Wanna shiver me timbers?

I’ve sailed the seven seas, and you’re the sleekest schooner I’ve ever sighted.

Brwaack! Polly want a cracker? … Oh, wait. That’s for Talk Like a PARROT Day.

That’s the finest pirate booty I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Let's get together and haul some keel.

That’s some treasure chest you’ve got there.

Top Ten Pickup Lines for the Lady Pirates

By popular demand ...

10. What are YOU doing here?

9. Is that a belayin' pin in yer britches, or are ye ... (this one is never completed)

8. Come show me how ye bury yer treasure, lad!

7. So, tell me, why do they call ye, "Cap'n Feathersword?"

6. That's quite a cutlass ye got thar, what ye need is a good scabbard!

5. Aye, I guarantee ye, I've had a twenty percent decrease in me "lice ratio!"

4. I've crushed seventeen men's skulls between me thighs!

3. C'mon, lad, shiver me timbers!

2. RAMMING SPEED!

...and the number one Female Pirate Pick-up Line:

1. You. Pants Off. Now!

Arrest more people!

Prison companies are making money!

Private Prison Management Company Seeks Guaranteed 90% Occupancy From States

This way and that way....

Americans v Brits.

Any discussion of Richard III needs this photo:



Speaking of evil villains:  Karl Rove.

WWII as seen today.  (a long gif.)

Romney v truth.

It's MAN talkin' time!  ... about rape.

Electronic voting machines ... have 'sleepovers' at poll-workers' houses.

Public education isn't being helped by all the testing... but the testing companies sure are making money!  And if you aren't in it for the money... you obviously are a loser.

Not an oxymoron:  a gay Christian, Matthew Vines.

Alzheimer's could be the most catastrophic impact of junk food

There is evidence that poor diet is one cause of Alzheimer's. If ever there was a case for the precautionary principle, this is it

And of course, cats

.

Romney and Monsanto

This explains everything.

Friday

Are you being persecuted because of your faith?  Because claiming you are persecuted is cool and makes people bond together against the bad guys and give money to churches and stuff.

We knew this when it happened.  It was obvious to those who could watch the news and think for themselves.  Bush and Cheney knew a lot more than they shared with us about Bin Laden and 9/11.  So when's the war crimes tribunal?

Jupiter saves Earth ... again.

If You Plan On Ever Getting Old And/Or Sick, You Need To See This

When the buffaloes roamed the prairies... and then when they didn't.

Should women be criminalized for having abortions?  Are we that close to losing the right to choose?  On the edge.

Scott Walker has a goon squad because 8x11 1/2 signs are a threat.  And being a mayor means you can do what you want.

Elizabeth Warren:



Rachel Maddow:  (sorry for the ads)

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Romney is Bush

Nobody has learned anything.  And the neocons need jobs.  Because somebody needs to attack Iran.  It's on the to-do list that didn't get completed during Georgie's time.

Soviet style propaganda

Obvious... but effective.  Does this make Fox News communist?

If the Republicans win the election

And we become a banana republic as Krugman predicts....

Does that mean free bananas for all?

Dabs and dollops

How not to be a creepy harasser.  What a GOP controlled government would be like for women.  Besides... there is no war on women by the Republicans. Nope, nope, no way.

Eat less meat and save the world.

Emergency responder  cyber cockroach... which will inevitably be used to spy on humans....

Romney's religion will control him more than he acknowledges.

Hungary tosses out Monsanto and the IMF.  And speaking of Monsanto: Roundup Herbicide Linked To Parkinson’s-Related Brain Damage

Ralph Reed:  Hypocrite

Selling out the public education system.

 How to cope with suddenly being homeless.

One sentence news

It gets better.

Finding a lost church.

Making friends under the sea.

Rachel Carson didn't kill millions of Africans.

Does eating today's type of wheat poison you?

Dumping the 'junk DNA' theory.

The way governments begin to topple.

Republicans can't afford to give women equal pay.

Come back!!  You have my car keys!

Do Democrats really support the privatization of public schools?

Artist of the weird.

Ohio Secretary of State on the mat to explain obstruction to voting.

Sometimes being rude is good.

GetBackToWork Day...

How to track a stolen laptop... and help with a drug bust.

A woman's place in the world from first to last.

Gene therapy restores the sense of smell in mice.

We won't go to war if Israel attacks Iran?



Tom Tomorrow.

Bernie Sanders.

Commieislamofascistic explanation of what socialism actually is.

Bobbles...

An awesome dad.

Why printers don't cancel printing right off...

The secret behind the empty chair.

Prisons for profit. Why change the system to serve justice when people are making money?

We are killing everything....

And after that, I need some animals:

Le chat du vendredi

Natural and unnatural disasters....

Oops.

Trojan asteroid in Earth's orbit.

Well, at least he admits it: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”  So, back to the Dark Ages!

Krugman.

We're all gonna diiiiiieeeee.....By diseases:  TB.... West Nile virus.... Hantavirus.... or by extreme weather that causes  flooding, food wars, or by a Romney presidency....

Update:  The Heartland virus....

Update 8/31: Global warming...

Paul Ryan v the truth

Because facts are tiresome.

The Era of Stupid

Reflected in this:

Republican Congressional Candidate Says 'Holocaust Never Happened 

Art Jones, who hopes to challenge Democrat Dan Lipinski in Illinois' 3rd Congressional District, neither denies nor repudiates his past affiliation with the neo-Nazi Party.

Do you think that maybe Art Jones actually passing his high school history class might have helped?

Because Karl Rove was involved...

It's not a conspiracy theory... New Court Filing Reveals How the 2004 Ohio Presidential Election Was Hacked

A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush. The filing also includes the revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio's vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush's unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a suspicious small plane crash.

It's amazing how Republicans yell about non-existent voter fraud and point fingers when they are doing weird shenanigans to block Ron Paul supporters from getting delegates in some states and a voice at the convention. Projection anyone?

What the net can do

When it tries.

Paul Ryan v women

Ryan on abortion exceptions: Rape is just another ‘method of conception’




Mother Jones: The Way It Was

In the same book, a man who assisted in autopsies in a big urban hospital, starting in the mid-1950s, describes the many deaths from botched abortions that he saw. "The deaths stopped overnight in 1973." He never saw another in the 18 years before he retired. "That," he says, "ought to tell people something about keeping abortion legal."

Scattershot news

Americans throw away 40 percent of their food every day

Less government...

Someone who is very displeased with Windows 8.

Why Pennsylvania's Voter ID Law Is Unconstitutional

But will the pharmaceuticals let this kid ruin their business?  I bet no.

Depression comes from eating too much trans-fats.

Never insult an Irishman:

Michael D. Higgins (who was elected president of Ireland last year) is fed up with over-the-top Tea Party rhetoric, and he isn't afraid to show it. Listen to him call out radio host Michael Graham on everything from health care to foreign policy in this heated exchange from 2010. Trust me, you don't want to miss this one.

The Drought Map.  And those who make money off of food shortages caused by drought.

The Problem with Men Explaining Things.

The Republican war on women's naughty bits

Rapists can get child visitation rights.

Sheriff Candidate OK With Deadly Force To Stop Abortions



 If rape victims must have their rapist's baby, then logically...

Update 8/23:


 

Ain't technology great?

Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram

Hackers backdoor the human brain, successfully extract sensitive data

ANOTHER robot I'd need to beat to death when I see it...

Clock.