Happy New Year

Drink in moderation



Behave yourself



Make sure you get home safely



And especially



(Cat reruns from years gone by)

Tuesday Night News Dump

Warning signs of a mass shooting

Tom Tomorrow critiques 2015.   Good guy with a gun or bad guy?

Robot water cleaner

Windy enough for ya?

Now we are back to self-induced abortions and desperate women.  Guess the GOP wants back alley abortions and women bleeding to death all over again.

We're using up a non-renewable resource in ground water.

The oldest pants in the world.

Europe rejects GMO eco-farming.

Dealing with Isis means dealing with deep rooted causes.

Extinct squash plant's seeds grow again.

The California rich waste water because they can.

What happens after Christmas....

Most punchable faces of 2015

I'm afraid I agree. Although I don't think I need to punch them... history will do that.

A Dump Truck of News

The GOP debate from several viewpoints.  Fact checking. Lack of presidential qualities. And how much nuking and bombing do they want?  Because fear works... or at least it did during the Bush era.  Will it work again? Because the GOP really really really wants to start WWIII because that's what they're good at.  War.  Because it's good business.

Tom Tomorrow.

Who let the fascist dogs out?  The GOP thought they could contain them....kept feeding them raw meat... encouraging them to distrust government...

(And why AREN'T we talking about the Saudi role in terrorism?)

If everyone is going to carry a gun, we need this new invention to stop bleeding to be a mandatory item too.

Homes on Mars.

This El Nino seems to be extra special.

Badass women of WWII.

Liberals live in their own bubble too.

George Bush ignored several pre-9/11 warnings to avoid a paper trail... but we knew this.

The melting of the permafrost brings all sorts of things to light.

The Bible?  Or the Koran?

Mr. Rogers was truly an excellent man.

George Takei takes on mayor who thought interment was a good idea.

British Muslims tell off Daesh.

It can be measured.

Fukushima radiation reaches San Francisco and the west coast.

update:  Mutations have been found in insects that go for many generations.

And they are well regulated...

Put it right by the Second Amendment

The war to end all wars seems to be never ending...

Pro-gun myths told about guns.

Noam Chomsky discusses the latest phase on the War on Terror.

Kevin Spacey discusses the need to protect the rain forests.

Teachers are the best.

When you can't think of how to get a greenhouse next to your home.... build the greenhouse OVER your home.  And then grow veggies right in your home!

2005-2015 memes explained.

There's no war on women, Ted Cruz, there's a war on families.

Silly cats for the cat tax.

What he said.

Getting riled up by Fox News and the GOP

Is an excuse for:

Trying to burn down a mosque.

Killing people because you believed the fake video and Fox News' story about selling baby parts.

Believing Carly Fiorina or Ted Cruz.

Thinking white Americans can't be terrorists.

Thinking that people of color means terrorism but white people?  Mental illness.

Thinking like Huckabee and immediately start claiming pro-lifers are the victims.

OMG! OMG!

Truth.

Life goes on...

Undelivered letters shed light on 17th-century society: Thousands of pieces of correspondence, many still unopened, were stored away by Dutch postmaster and are now being examined by academics

Dispersants didn't disperse the BP oil spill in the Gulf.  The chemicals just hid the mess from people and poisoned all the sea creatures.....

Global climate change is a hoax... or the hoax is a hoax.

What teachers do.

Edible water containers?

Richard Scarry's books for children are keeping up with the times!

Energy for free?!  Oh the humanity!!... I mean, O the corporations!!

Once upon a time

Telling the tale of Syria's civil war and how it began.

Record-sized ozone hole.. but nothing to worry about here.

Proof that animals are plotting to take over the world... unless we kill them all first.  Or maybe they'll take themselves out...

The Rude Pundit is rude about Kentucky.

Just in time for Happy Halloween!

Kate Beaton's Young Goodman Brown.

The history of spooky movies.

The Great Pumpkin (or Spooky), the asteroid passing by Earth today.

Meme costumes.

Bullets, brain cells, and breasts

A mother wants you to see what bullets did to her child.

Plastic eating mealworms may save our planet from ourselves. And we need to build many of these 'trash wheels' and let them go all over the planet's oceans.  Kinda like really large roombas...

How to build new brain cells.

GMO Arctic apples.  Bacon is not fatal, just not particularly good for you.  Lettuce by LED lights.

Here's what Marijuana does to breast cancer.

The Griffin Warrior found in Pylos, Greece.

We vote not for what we like but against what we're afraid of.  Fear works.

House design after living in a dumpster.

Uh oh... Scientology has its own candidate for Senate.

Because malnutrition was so fun...

Clinton and Benghazi?

What the Rude Pundit said.

A nice list to remind Jeb what his brother actually did in office

Thanks, Raw Story.

No matter what they say, it's all about sex.

Take, for instance, Monica Miller of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, who was one of the major organizers for the past weekend’s nationwide protests of Planned Parenthood. The official story Republicans are pushing is that the attacks on Planned Parenthood are about “life,” but Miller broke with the party line and let the truth slip out on a Catholic radio program. “I say even if Planned Parenthood didn’t perform one single abortion, just the mere fact that its sexual ethic is corrupted means right there, should be the reason right there, that they should not receive any federal money,” Miller argued. “The kind of sexual ethic that Planned Parenthood promotes is sex for recreation, sex for mere pleasure.” 

It’s clear why Republican leadership might not want people to hear that the anti-choice movement, at its core, is about trying to end the practice of sex for pleasure.

IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME

ACLU Sues Ex-Psychologists Who Designed CIA Torture Program

Celebrate the first computer programmer

Ada Lovelace.  Kate Beaton's take.

This quote about Fox News

Is marvelous:

Some people think the media business is tough, but think of it like teaching preschool. There's a whole range of strategies, but one of them, guaranteed to work, is walking into class every morning and handing out giant tubs of ice cream. The Fox lineup is the media equivalent of this: a giant pile of tits, explosions and football.

Worth reading

Inside The Race To Stop The Next Mass Shooter by Mark Follman

Giant air sucking machines and other stuff

Giant air sucking machines may be coming your way.  And that's a good thing.

The abortion pill, why it works well and why it's being prevented from doing so.  And why the Republicans are out of step with the rest of America.  And why even talking about having had an abortion makes you a whore.

What gun shots do to a body.  What a warped sense of masculinity might make someone do.

Cartoonist Sarah Anderson.

Lawrence Wilkerson talks about the USA splitting apart.

Did you know there were many more types of potatoes than what we can buy at the store?

Fukushima in pictures four years later.

Exactly.

Gun lovers don't get to mourn with me.

And:

Dear NRA and pro-gun advocates

Dear NRA

What about our children's right to live?

This could have been me.  My children.  My husband.  My relatives.  When does it end?

Update: Amanda Marcotte gives us the 4 horrible pro-gun arguments that will be used.

Rep. Elijah Cummings is my hero.

The European Refugee Crisis and Syria Explained

Uh oh....

A curious cold spot in the Atlantic has scientists thinking their worst fears have come true.

The answer may be simple, and it’s definitely sad. The cold spot in the Atlantic is likely a symptom of a problem climate scientists have been fearing for years. Record cold temps in this condensed area of the ocean suggests that the circulation of water currents in the Atlantic is slowing. Warm and cold water should be mixing to normalize water temperatures, but the currents are functioning the way they need to. They rely on differences in temperature and salinity, which basically means that cold salty water in the North Atlantic sinks (it’s really dense) and warmer southern waters move northward to take its place. When a large influx of cold, fresh water is introduced to the picture, the system goes haywire and the water circulation patterns are weakened because the sinking doesn’t occur. And where is the fresh water coming from? The melting glaciers, of course. If the trend continues, it could mean rising sea levels along the East Coast and a change in temperature for Europe and North America.

Norway saves the planet and other stuff

Thank you, Norway!  Helping keep the Brazilian rain forests alive.

Kate Beaton.

Joe Hill, who should never be erased from history.



Library books that people try to censor most.

Myth Surrounding Alleged Iranian Nuclear Facility Begins to Unravel

Bill Nye and women's reproduction.

When and Where to See the Super-Rare Supermoon Lunar Eclipse

The evils of microbeads.

Melting Paint Stripping Sex Robots and then some

Video suggesting what Earth would look like if all the ice melted.

Remembering what Republicans would like to forget about Reagan.

Gut-punching article on the mass incarceration of blacks and what it has done to the family.

Trumpets across Jakarta?

Having to follow ALL the rules not to get raped.

Why day dreaming, science fiction, and libraries are necessary.

Paint-stripping chemicals like methylene chloride are deadly.  Fatal.  Fatally deadly.  Deadly fatal.

Would sex robots help misogynists stay out of the dating pool?

Mathematician suing to get Kansas election records because suspicions of election fraud.

The Republican debate in 25 seconds

With as much clarity as the real one.

Plastic radioactive oceans, no snowpack, and another end of the world is coming

Monsanto and scientists collude to push GMO on the public.

Water from Fukushima dumped into Pacific.  And fracking is poisoning us all.  And (youtube) our oceans are turning into plastic soup.

History of the Pledge of Allegiance.

President Obama makes the case that Republicans are un-American.

Snowpack in California is at a 500 year low.

Being a Neolithic farmer sucked.  Although living right now can suck too.

Yet another end of the world is coming in late September.

George Takei explains why Kim Davis is wrong.  Let this be the final statement of this idiocy.  (Please!)

Response by University of Missouri Student Body President Payton Head to hateful name-calling directed at him.

836,290 deaths since 1989.  If this was a disease, we'd be frantically trying to find a cure.  But this number is deaths by guns.  We have an answer, we just are too afraid to say it.  Gun control, gun safety.

End robocalls!

A Canadian viewpoint of Donald Trump

Via Bryan of Why Now? a wonderful take on the Republican Golem:

The paternal, indulgent smile usually worn by the barbered and tanned Republican establishment is gone. 

In its place is whey-faced fear. The primary-season freakshow that once served the party's interests so nicely now threatens to consume it. 

Mainstream Republicans (admittedly a relative term nowadays) have lost control to a reality show star, a vulgar braggart who somehow manages to evince populism while flaunting extreme wealth and his membership in the .0001 per cent club. 

Donald Trump transcends the freakshow, he's the whole carnival in one man, and taking the car keys away from him isn't going to be easy, if it can be done at all. 

It wasn't supposed to work this way. The freakshow is meant to entertain and pacify the Don't-Tread-On-Me Tea Party bunch during the endless American primary season. 

The idea is to promise unattainable far-right goals until the actual campaign starts, when the adults step in and make the compromises inevitably necessary to attain national power.

Rapid Response Referral Program

For veterans in need.  What a wonderful idea by the IAVA.

Skeletons in our closets

How English sounded 500 years ago.

One of my favorite comic artists Kate Beaton who illustrates and writes Hark! A Vagrant!

Medieval skeleton found when large tree is uprooted in a storm.

Why 80,000 rape kits have been ignored.  A Quaker talks about helping protect those who need abortions.

Homophobia leads to death threats.  I think the gay is buried deep in this one.  And speaking of forced submission and obsession about dominance, this article suggests 43% of Republicans would favor a military coup.

Put solar cells on everything!

Windows 10 is on your computer... even if you don't want it there.

Trying to explain Donald Trump.

Friday to Friday creeps in its petty pace ....

Ways to avoid being eaten by mosquitoes.

What climate change means to polar bears.  And to bring back to life ancient pathogens which may or may not be virulent.

Building a sailboat and the love of woodcraft.

The opposite of hoarding... being too clean?

A necessary and informative timeline from the New York Times (takes us only to April 2015) to show how long it took to get the Iran nuclear agreement and why it is a big effing deal.  And why Cheney wants Iran to be all Obama's fault.

How to catch liars.

A designer for Silicon Valley.  She's over 90.

A scientist's doubts over GMOs.  French court finds Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning.

Harvard linguist points out the 58 most commonly misused words and phrases

Dealing with depression.

9/11 conspiracies list.

The point we have been making all along

Stalking women, drought, voting fraud, and guns.

Ben Carson's view of women.  Stalking is not romantic.

How to understand and end California's drought.

Lion cub learning how to swim.

Dealing with the radiation fears about Fukushima.

Have self-compassion.

Kansas voting is manipulated.

President Obama is a class act.  Dealing with Native Americans.

Understanding China's economic slowdown.

Ideas for dealing with oceans filled with plastic.

Stating the obvious: The States With The Most Gun Laws See The Fewest Gun-Related Deaths

The single greatest threat is not Iran.... it's

...us.

Fifteen years ago, the prominent political analyst Samuel Huntington, professor of the science of government at Harvard, warned in the establishment journal Foreign Affairs that for much of the world the United States was “becoming the rogue superpower…the single greatest external threat to their societies.” Shortly after, his words were echoed by Robert Jervis, the president of the American Political Science Association: “In the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States.” As we have seen, global opinion supports this judgment by a substantial margin.

Sunday snippets

Thank you, President Carter.

President Bill Clinton being called the first black president was no compliment.

Mysterious ancient wooden statue, 11,000 years old.

Hawaii Flips Switch on World’s Largest Ocean Harvesting Clean Energy Plant

Monday blues

Methane danger.

It seems that the entire west coast of the US is on fire.

And if you aren't on fire, you're melting from the heat.

Market crash tied to China?  Paul Krugman: ..."what we’re seeing is what happens when too much money is chasing too few investment opportunities".

Bed bugs.

Or you could just have police crash through your door at 5 in the morning, not let you cover your naked body, and tell you to shut up.... before they realize they have the wrong apartment.

From tests to fires and all things in between

John Oliver takes on standardized testing.

A renowned antiquities scholar, Khaled al-Asaad, has been beheaded because he wouldn't tell ISIS where antique artifacts were hidden.  We own this brave man much for saving human history from these ugly vandals.

People killed by US police this year alone.

Buy ugly vegetables and save the world.

The plunder of black life.

Pharmaceuticals in the environment:

All indications are that we're just at the beginning when it comes to understanding the presence and importance of pharmaceuticals in the environment, let alone what to do about them. Even as scientists investigate what's actually out there, pharmaceutical companies work to make drugs and drug production more environmentally benign, wastewater treatment professionals develop better ways to remove pharmaceuticals, and environmental and public health advocates work on campaigns to change practices, studies finding pharmaceuticals in the environment keep coming. 

In fact, Kolpin says, hundreds are published each year. And although the amounts of pharmaceuticals being measured are exceptionally small, he says this information is important because it provides a base line for future comparison. 

"What we think today is safe, we may find 10 years from now there is some effect, that we didn't realize at the time was important," he says. "We're not trying to say the sky is falling. We're trying to put out the science saying there are some things that are of concern."

How much climate change will cost us.

World’s Second Largest Source of Electricity Is Now Renewables

Dog that helps sniff out foul brood disease in bee colonies.

California is on fire.  So is Alaska...

Do NOT let the Republicans whitewash the Bush presidency.

The eight years we had to live through while Georgie was at the helm should never be forgotten.  And the Republicans are trying to do just that.  Talking Points Memo's Aurin Squire:

Memories...

We're having a heat wave.... *wheeze* ...

Hot enough for ya?  Apparently hot enough to melt cats.....

Prairie dogs have a complex language with nouns and adjectives.

Guns! 2016!!

Jeb Bush: ‘Taking Out Saddam Hussein Turned Out To Be A Pretty Good Deal’ and then hear about what actually happened.

Ben Carson and the fetal tissue issue.

Graphene will save the world... if we don't self-destruct first.  (Corn is part of the problem.)

Shooting first

Answering questions later.  Because that works so well.

George Washington would not be pleased if he were here today....

Trouble in the American Psychological Association, where an independent review reported they were 'complicit in brutal military and CIA interrogation.'

A beautiful letter to Amy Schumer about the shooting at the Trainwreck movie.  Because apparently we just love our guns more than our children.

And some of those gun-lovers really really want a war with somebody.  Anybody.

9/11 NSA coverup?

You must eat MORE sugar!

Fetal-tissuegate

What Windows 10 will do whether you are aware of it or not.

China? Nope, hasn't learned anything. Still putting crap in the food.

The latest in a LONNNGGG line of production horrors in China:

China launches inquiry over claims brewers added Viagra to alcohol  (My bold)

Chinese police are investigating allegations that two distillers added Viagra to their liquor in the country’s latest food-safety scare.

The Liuzhou Food and Drug Administration said that it found the Guikun Alcohol Plant and the Deshun Alcohol Plant, both located in the southwest of China, were putting Sildenafil, more commonly known as Viagra, into three of their baijiu products. Baijiu, also known as “rice wine”, is a strong distilled spirit.

China’s food traceability systems and regulation were classified as “poor” in a 2014 report from the Institute of Food Technologists, with the lowest score of around 20 countries in the survey. Barcode tracking systems for produce, common in the United States and Europe, are largely absent in the country and food safety control systems from farm to factory are weak.


Adding the above to the long list I've been keeping on the products that come out of China.

PetSmart joins Petco in halting sales of Chinese dog and cat treats  

Pet owners have complained for years that treats imported from China, in particular chicken jerky, have caused illnesses that officials have been unable to pinpoint. Nonetheless, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued periodic warnings since 2007.

“We’ve been following the FDA warnings and related customer concerns closely, and we’ve been actively reducing our China-made assortment and expanding our American-made offerings for several years now,” said Jim Myers, Petco's chief executive.

“As a leader in the industry and the trusted partner for our pet parents, we’re eager to make this transition and to expand our assortment of safe and healthy treats," Myers said. "Very simply, we feel this decision is in the best interest of the pets we all love and, ultimately, for our business.”

Petco, based in San Diego, said it expects all China-made treats will be removed from its more than 1,300 stores nationwide by year's end.

PetSmart Inc. soon followed, saying it would also end sales of China-made pet treats.
I have posted my list of Chinese products that have been badly made, toxic, mislabeled.  I have used only those articles from substantiated news outlets.  I do not go searching for them, but this is the list I have collected over just a few years of watching.

Daily Kos (via Steve Bates):

Recently, Diane Rehm had a show about prescription drugs sold in the U.S. that are manufactured outside of the U.S. Unknown to me (and probably many others) many of the prescription drugs that we take were actually manufactured outside of the United States. According to Dr. Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner of the FDA: Eighty percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in drugs taken here are actually manufactured in other countries and about 40 percent of the finished drugs are coming from other countries.
Really?  China?  This China?

China, selling fox meat as donkey meat to its clients.  Not that I'll ever eat donkey meat.  That's not the point.  It's that, again, China is caught selling something inedible/ poisonous/ toxic/ contaminated/ mislabeled to customers.  Don't they have an 'FDA' branch of the government that enforces quality controls?  If they don't, why would anyone trust China to sell anything reliable, safe, or uncontaminated?

Here is the list culled from the many posts on my blog on China's ongoing problems in food and industrial safety.

Gutter oil made in China... from dead animals and garbage.  Are we sure we want them to process our chickens?

They never seem to learn:

 220,000 Pounds Of Poisoned Dead Fish Scooped Up In China In Reminder Of Pollution Plaguing Country

Authorities have scooped up around 100,000 kilograms (220,000 pounds) of dead fish they say were poisoned by ammonia from a chemical plant, environmental officials and state media said Wednesday, in a reminder of the pollution plaguing the country.

The Hubei province environmental protection department, notified of the piles of dead fish in central China's Fuhe River on Monday, pointed the finger at local company Hubei Shuanghuan Science and Technology Stock Co. Officials said sampling of its drain outlet showed that ammonia density far exceeded the national standard. The company said it wasn't going to immediately comment.

Inadequate controls on industry and lax enforcement of existing standards have worsened China's pollution problem, stemming from three decades of breakneck economic growth. High-profile incidents this year involving dead animals in rivers – not only deaths attributed to pollution but also carcasses dumped by farmers after die-offs at farms – have added to public disgust and suspicions about the safety of drinking water.

The latest incident has affected the nearby fishing village of Huanghualao, where 1,600 residents make a living from fishing, said the village's Communist Party secretary, Wang Sanqing.

Adding yet one more thing that illustrates why we can't trust food products (or anything else) from China:

More than 900 people have been arrested in China for involvement in meat-related crimes, including producing fake beef and mutton from animals such as rats, minks and foxes, authorities reported.

A total of 382 cases of alleged crimes in food industry were uncovered in a three-month campaign launched by China’s Ministry of Public Security on January 25, the ministry reported.
In addition to producing falsely-labeled meat, the crimes included using banned chemicals in processing of products, selling meat infected with various diseases and injecting water into meat to pad up its weight, according to Xinhua news agency.

Security officials seized more than 20,000 tons of illegal meat products during the crackdown.
The ministry said it will now focus on dairy products, continuing a larger campaign to combat crime and violations in food industry.

Nice to see official attempts to crackdown on this unregulated industry.  But I bet I will be posting yet another article sometime soon about poisonous/ toxic/ polluted/ contaminated products made in China.  Because that's the way it is.

Update:  I do hope the Chinese scientists know what they are doing....
Scientists warn Chinese-made air-transmissible bybrid bird flu puts humanity at risk

From my many posts on this subject:

Fake Medicine from China Threatening Lives in Africa

 *sigh*

Add it to the list:

BEIJING—The discovery of unusual levels of mercury in Chinese-produced infant formula reignited fears about the safety of the country's scandal-ridden dairy industry, and underlined the severe challenges the government faces in improving food safety.
Mercury in baby formula.

Pills for human consumption containing human remains.

China poisons more pets:

November 18, 2011 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued an important bulletin warning consumers that chicken jerky products (also marketed as chicken tenders, strips or treats) may be associated with serious illness in dogs.
Over the past 12 months, the FDA has observed an increase in the number of complaints regarding canine illnesses associated with consumption of chicken jerky products imported from China.
These complaints have been reported to the government by both dog owners and veterinarians.
And here is the ever-expanding list:

But according to FSN, the biggest reason to avoid ultra-filtered honey is that pollen is the only sure-fire way to trace the source of honey to a geographic location. As a result ultra-filtered honey is often used to mask the shady origins of certain kinds of honey -- especially Chinese honey, which is subject to heavy import tariffs on account of its frequent contamination by heavy metals and illegal antibiotics. Chinese honeymakers ultra-filter their honey, and then ship it through byzantine paths, to sneak their sham product onto American grocery shelves without being hit with a tariff.
Vinegar from China kills 11 people.

"From steroid-spiked pork to glow-in-the-dark meat to recycled cooking oil collected from sewers, a series of illnesses and scandals linked to tainted food has put officials on guard. But tougher measures have had little effect amid an official culture of secrecy."

Watermelons spiked with growth chemicals explode in the fields... so the farmers feed the forchlorfenuron saturated melons to fish and pigs.

Waste water forced into pigs going to market.

Fresh milk tainted with melamine and toxic substances extracted from leather scraps... killed 6 children in China and sickened 300,000.

Rice is contaminated with heavy metals like cadmium.

Fake rice made from plastic, potatoes and resin.

Pulverized lime added to bleaching agents widely used in flour production. Pulverized lime damages the lungs and the entire respiratory system.

Cadmium in children's toys and little girl jewelry. Lead in toys: Thomas the Tank Engine, baby bibs, cub scout badges, wooden blocks. Formaldehyde in candy, in baby clothing. Coma-inducing date rape drug in toys.

Asbestos in toys.

"The rampant use of chemical additives in animal feed can be traced to 1999. According to Gao Yinxiang, the research and development of high-protein feed additives was a hot field among scientists about 10 years ago due to shortage of animal fodder in the country at the time.

From that time, it's hard to define the exact role that scientists played in the evolution of the melamine scandal. Yet scientists certainly contributed to it by developing unsafe protein alternatives. Many Chinese are now calling on scientists to examine their conscience before making profits at the expense of public safety."

Melamine in pet food kills house pets in the US. Melamine is found in wheat, corn and rice gluten.

China says no to inspections and destroys evidence.

Rat poison in breakfast porridge.

Pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella. Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical. Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria. Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

Toothpaste with diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical used in engine coolants.

Highly toxic puffer fish sold as monk fish.

Fake blood protein.

Wild mice used for meat.

Defective tires.

Use of illegal drift nets.

Fake kosher food.

Insecticide-tainted dumplings.

More than 40 percent of drinking water in rural China is unfit for drinking.

Poisoned chocolate.

Toxic drywall which caused houses to be uninhabitable.

Fake Cisco routers

Misuse and overuse of antibiotics. "Studies in China show a "frightening" increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus bacteria, also know as MRSA."

The list will inevitably be added to. When are we going to learn this is what happens to corporations when there is no regulation?

From turbines to sniper rifles... what's not to love?

Wind turbine trees.

The 9 teachers who just received awards from the White House were all in the U.S. illegally.

Earthquake preparedness.

Earth from space.

That useless liberal arts degree is needed in the tech business.

Jimmy Carter says we're not a democracy anymore.  We're an oligarchy. (h/t to Steve Bates.)

Hacking a self-aiming sniper rifle.

Monday

Hacking, Porcupines, and Robocalls

Why hacking and invading privacy matters.

Porcupines like salt.  Really like salt.

We're boiling our oceans.  As well as melting all the sea ice.  And killing all the fish.

Jeb Bush is meaner than he looks.  And things are going to get serious.

Since Sandy Hook there have been 72 mass shootings.

Christian pastor stunned by secular Scandinavians.

How to be polite. (It may save the world.)

A petition to sign to end robocalls.

When Onion is too close to the truth to be satire....

It's not funny at all....

Sunday slurry

Robocall justice.  I promise never to buy any product being sold by cold calling people.

Science!

Prisoner's dilemma.

Explaining what privilege means.

Torture doctors could be prosecuted?  It's about time!!  Jean Maria Arrigo needs to be praised as well.

Wonderful graphs showing that human activity is warming the world.  And plastic in your food will kill you.

Donald Trump will allow Jeb to position himself as the sane one.

More guns = more crime.

Concerning Jeb Bush's statement about working longer hours

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo says it all: (my bold)

It's unclear to me whether Bush doesn't even fully understand the policies his advisors are trying to explain to him or whether this is just standard patrician work ethic morality. Whichever it is, the real structural problem in our economy is stagnant wages for more than a generation for most of the population. Advances or just keeping up have largely been accomplished by working more hours at the same wages (in real terms). Meanwhile, wealth and income from labor productivity gains have tended to go the very wealthy rather than wage earners. This is all known and discussed to the point of being a cliche. But this is the gist. There's a decent argument that people working longer hours is the problem; it's definitely not the solution. 

This again is something you say about work when it's something other people do.

Help save our Public Postal Service

By signing this.  Thanks.

Bangkok is one example to show what will happen with climate change

Bangkok is running out of water.  Good explanation of the dangers we face with climate change:

Drought and flooding are two sides of the same climate change coin. As temperatures increase worldwide, water evaporates more quickly and dry spells become worse. At the same time, warm air can hold more water vapor, so rains can be heavier. In the past five years, Thailand has experienced its worst droughts and floods of the past few decades. 

As if that weren’t enough, Bangkok, built on marshland and originally crisscrossed with canals — which are now mostly filled in — sinks nearly 4 inches each year, according to the Climate Institute. Coupled with rising sea levels, this means Bangkok could be underwater within 10 to 15 years, the group reported. 

And cycles of intense drought and flooding can exacerbate that process. Just last week, Thai newspaper the Nation reported that roads are sinking and collapsing in the drought-stricken province just north of Bangkok. 

While drinking water in the capital is running low, the whole country is facing damaging effects of drought. Thailand is the rice capital of the world, and the crop is expected to be low this year, after farmers have already been asked to delay their planting in central Thailand. The disruption could lead to protests and economic woes, farmers have said. 

Thailand’s electricity system also depends on water supplies. The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) issued a warning this week that the letting too much water out of dams would be problematic.

Happy Fourth of July!

Not one more.

Would Mark Twain recognize the US today? I think he would....

Said almost one hundred and fifty years ago but still applicable: Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute and cannot unite -- but they all worship money.    Mark Twain

Larry Wilmore Had the Best 2 Minutes on the Confederate Flag You'll See  And some people can't understand what the word slavery actually means.

Is fracking killing babies in Vernal, Utah?

Amazon tribe creates 500-page traditional medicine encyclopedia

Anti-intellectualism is killing the US.

Alaska is going up in smoke.

Why rape victims often don't fight or scream.

Delayed drowning involving children.  This can happen after the child seems ok after choking in the pool and pulled to safety.

*Gasp* A woman scientist who agrees with Tim Hunt....

A little late but a nicely drawn comic explaining the TPP and  how trade works.

Amanda Marcotte explains it all

Amanda Marcotte:"....why conservatives see same-sex marriage as a threat to traditional marriage. It’s not because straight people won’t want to get married if gays are doing it, too. It’s because it redefines marriage as an institution of love instead of oppression."

Guns

update:  they pulled the video, sorry.  I'll try to find another copy.
update: here you go.

Racism is in our national DNA.

How do we re-engineer our genes to stop the fear and the hatred?  Can we even address the stupidity that we send drones over other countries to 'protect' Americans but have to accept our own home-grown terrorism?  And then we have an idiot NRA board member suggesting that the pastor asked for his death by being against concealed carry, exposing the fact the NRA lives in more anxiety and debilitating fear than the pastor.

The bodies were hard to identify, which speaks to the culture of hatred this young man marinated in.

For all those delicate flowers in the NRA

Because of the recent Charleston shooting.  This cartoon was done in 2012 and it's still applicable.  How horrible is that?

Can we finally get a War Crimes Tribunal?

CIA torture appears to have broken spy agency rule on human experimentation.  We knew this then, we know this now.  What is so awful is the inability to admit we went full-Dr. Mengele on the people in Gitmo.  We tortured.  Admit it.

And then send the people responsible for this horrible moral and ethical failure to jail.

Release the kittens!

Run away! Or maybe not.

Late Night Show

A new movie about women fighting for the right to vote... to educate those who don't know their history what it took for voting to be a right.

Weather whiplash... a great term to describe how our lives and our weather will be from now on out.  And in the 80s in Alaska.

Sitting on manspreaders.

It's not the fat, it's the sugar.

It's not clean water, it's been fracked.  And the lack of glaciers and snow pack has some people worried.  Ya THINK?

Lobsters were once really really big.  And probably still delicious....

Trans guy illustrates what male privilege is.

A school blackboard uncovered last written on in the year 1917.

A bible instead of a textbook inside of a science class?

The incompetence of Pluto's moons.

USA congressional districts

Global warming accelerating

Kitten discovers the pattern on the rug.

A little of this, a bit of that

Laser pointers and cat variations

Bed bugs and the psychological effects of coping with them.  And ways to get rid of them.

Protecting our drinking water.  Cleaning plastic from our oceans.

Monsanto working hard to discredit scientists.

Mark Ruffalo, a true hulk.  Fear of powerful women.

Dutch sexuality education.

Interesting question and intriguing answers:  What has the internet made obsolete?

The awfulness of the 2000 presidential election revisited.

How can you tell if rocks were tools in prehistoric times?

The dangers of coal to our climate.  Ocean conservationist sounds a warning to Canada.

Eggs, chickens, and turkeys are going to become more expensive.

Wendell Potter explains the machinations of the health insurance companies.

Pesticides killing off the Monarch butterfly.

Ten poverty myths disproved.

New Bush, new lies about the Iraq War.

Memorial Day

The general who apologized to the dead soldiers on Memorial Day "When Truscott spoke he turned away from the visitors and addressed himself to the corpses he had commanded here. It was the most moving gesture I ever saw. It came from a hard-boiled old man who was incapable of planned dramatics," Mauldin wrote. "The general's remarks were brief and extemporaneous. He apologized to the dead men for their presence here. He said everybody tells leaders it is not their fault that men get killed in war, but that every leader knows in his heart this is not altogether true. "He said he hoped anybody here through any mistake of his would forgive him, but he realized that was asking a hell of a lot under the circumstances. . . . he would not speak about the glorious dead because he didn't see much glory in getting killed if you were in your late teens or early twenties. He promised that if in the future he ran into anybody, especially old men, who thought death in battle was glorious, he would straighten them out. He said he thought that was the least he could do."

They would like to have us forget they made the mess in Iraq.

As much as they want to rewrite history, we won't let them.

How much food do we waste?

It's astonishing.  You can even make a haul dumpster diving.

The Blame Game

Afraid of women voters.

The Girl Scouts org will accept trans girls.

I love this woman's face.

Give to the one you love.

An honest reply to the question,"Why are you liberal?"

Islam v feminism.

This should be front page news.

Bush and Cheney lied us into war.  But we knew that.  Even back then.

What Digby said.

Trolls, Jeb Bush and explosive volcanoes

Call it violent misogyny rather than trolling.

More about Jeb Bush and his preaching to a rather unimpressed evangelical crowd.  And his support of White Supremacy.  And his lack of regret for getting involved with the Terri Schiavo case. And his declaration that he too would have invaded Iraq.  Student tells Jeb that his brother created ISIS.   If you want a repeat of the wonderful years of Georgie Bush but this time with Iran.... vote for Jeb.

Oatmeal has suggestions on what we should have been taught in senior year of high school.

Bees are still in trouble:
U.S. Honeybee Population Plummets by More Than 40%, USDA Finds

Something called volcano monitoring.