Thursday, October 31, 2013

You're either fer us or again us...

For:

Wonderful little known part of the ACA.

Teaching children how to enjoy vegetables.

Against:

By tilting the playing field in favor of industry... and against the environment and people's overall health.

By enchanting people with blunt talk... and disguising the fact that the Koch brothers LOVE Governor Christie. (transcript found here.)

By ignoring all the things in your 21st century house that will mess with your hormones and health.

By believing Obamacare will kill you, abort your babies, prevent your children learning about creationism, and all the things the evil Kenyan illegal president has done in his life and in his two terms. (How do you reason with people who accept these as fact?)

By believing corporations who lie to you to bend democracy for their benefit.

By not caring that our oceans are broken.

And then there are those who explain both sides extremely well.




Sunday, October 27, 2013

From Cats to Jellyfish to Chickens

Friday cat blogging on Sunday.

A wonderful perspective on religion and God from a religious man.

Sexy avatars in games affect players in the real world.

I may not want to eat anything ever again.... besides... we're all gonna die anyway.

Invasion by jellyfish the world over... could it possibly be because the oceans are warming?  If not death by jellyfish, how about being choked to death by weeds?

Can you spell hypocrite?

A sensible horror film.

Elizabeth Smart is just that.  Googling women and a verb.

Republicans went crazy in stages.  Tea party logic.  Lies told in Texan charter schools.

Changing oceans.

How historically correct is 12 Years a Slave?

One way to deal with the homeless.

Infected chickens sold by Foster Farms were not recalled.

Friday, October 18, 2013

Blocking the women's vote in Texas....

As of November 5, Texans must show a photo ID with their up-to-date legal name. It sounds like such a small thing, but according to the Brennan Center for Justice, only 66% of voting age women have ready access to a photo document that will attest to proof of citizenship. This is largely because young women have not updated their documents with their married names, a circumstance that doesn’t affect male voters in any significant way. Suddenly 34% of women voters are scrambling for an acceptable ID, while 99% of men are home free.

As of November 5, a birth certificate is not enough. Women voters will have to show legal proof of a name change: a marriage license, a divorce decree, or court ordered change; and they have to be the original documents. No photocopies allowed. This means thousands of women face the hassle of figuring out what they need and how to get it. Then they face at least a $20 fee, more if a woman doesn’t have the time to stand in line and wants it mailed. As a result, many women who are eligible to vote, won’t.

You have to hand it to Texas. Abortion politics threaten to drive the election for governor, so they have figured out a way to discourage a large group of women who are likely have a personal interest in the issue of choice: married women of child-bearing age. Women who might favor Wendy Davis.
You think Texas Republicans know what they've activated? All those totally pissed off Texan women?  Really?  Disenfranchising voters so the Republicans can keep their grip on power exposes the last frantic gasps of a dying party.  RIP to the GOP.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Celebrating more of the Era of Stupid

How dumb are the Americans?  Are Republicans stupid?

The Reign of Morons.

Idiotic testing for eleven year old students.  Who the hell thinks up these questions?

Starting the Civil War all over again... or maybe trying to finish the last one...

Update 10/15:

Why people believe Fox News.

Why fundamentalists want the End of Times to happen.

Pot luck

Delicious forgotten words... we need to start using them now!

The mystery of Skeleton Lake in India.

The graph that shows what the US owes to everybody.

SEE!!  I told you raccoons were clever!

Eating at home v eating out.

Thank god my family and I live in California.

Anna Holmes and Jezebel.

Nate Silver's predictions for the Republicans.  Waving the Confederate flag at the most inappropriate time.

How Christopher McCandless (Into the Wild) probably died.

Could Boehner be playing to win?

Malala asks Obama to end drone strikes.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson critiques the film Gravity.  And we've been SuperNova'ed!

Finally!  Another planet we could call home, just in time, too!  We've really wrecked up this one!





Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Where the right-to-lifers want us all to live

On Wednesday, National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) announced a lawsuit has been filed in federal court seeking the immediate release from state custody of a pregnant Wisconsin woman who was involuntarily detained at a drug treatment facility despite no evidence she was using drugs while pregnant. 
Alicia Beltran, a 28-year-old pregnant woman confided in health-care workers about her prior use of painkillers and her efforts to end that use on her own during an early prenatal care visit. On July 18, Wisconsin law enforcement officials arrested her under a 1997 Wisconsin law, which gives the state the power to forcibly detain any pregnant woman who “habitually lacks self-control” and poses a “substantial risk” to the health of an egg, embryo, or fetus. 
[snip] 
NAPW notes in its announcement of the lawsuit that Beltran “was forcibly taken into custody by law enforcement when she was 15 weeks pregnant, put into handcuffs and shackles, and brought to a court hearing. Although a lawyer had already been appointed to represent her fetus, Ms. Beltran had no right to counsel—and therefore had no attorney—at the initial court appearance. Then, without testimony from a single medical expert, the court ordered her to be detained at an inpatient drug treatment program two hours from her home.”

Attorney Linda Vanden Heuvel, who represents Beltran, explained in a statement that “[l]ocking up Ms. Beltran, under the Wisconsin law, does not serve the best interests of Ms. Beltran’s future child and most certainly tramples the rights of Ms. Beltran, a woman who was not in fact using any controlled substances at the time of her arrest and who is committed to having a healthy pregnancy.”

Sunday, October 06, 2013

Simply Sunday

Eden and Adam and Eve are apparently scientific enough to be in science textbooks.... in Texas.

Supervolcano ... on Mars.

Oldest alcoholic drinks on earth.

Killer hornets in China.

Senator Elizabeth Warren on the GOP shutdown.

Rep. Joe Barton thinks wind is a finite resource:
Barton has used the threat of global warming to combat something he hates even more: wind energy. In a 2009 hearing, Barton implied that wind is a "finite resource" and that harnessing it would "slow the winds down" which would "cause the temperature to go up."