Now come the thought police

 

Florida Gov signs law requiring students, faculty be asked their political beliefs

Won't somebody please think of the children??!

 

So we know who they were

And can honor them.

Thursday's child has far to go...

What is it with cats and boxes?

Legalize marijuana if you must... but don't let the pharmaceutical companies get their grubby paws on it.

Ryan's oops.

Krugman to Obama: It's the economy.

Jon Stewart with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jon Stewart with Rachel Maddow.

BPA has leached into all of us...

Blackwater was CIA's extension, founder Erik Prince admits

One more reason not to visit Florida.

Off to a running start...

The winners of the 2012 Golden Duke awards.

States that allow cameras in dressing rooms

Parenting in timelapse

Hunting pythons... in Florida.

Italy looks fondly back on Mussolini.. things must really be getting bad over there.

Ezra Klein's take on the fiscal cliff/ curve/ curb.  And BooMan reassures us.

Stuff. Because it's still hot at 11 o'clock at night.

The facts about the Great Pacific Plastic Garbage Gyre.

Your chair is trying to kill you.

Florida... *cough*.. *cough*

An evil plot to create more stupid voters who vote against their own interests.

A Lego bridge in Germany.

Star Trek?!  NO.... ALIENS!!

Contraception saves 250,000 lives each year: study

Odds of record U.S. heat being a random event: 1 in 1.6 million and U.S. Sees Hottest 12 Months And Hottest Half Year On Record and so Climate scientists are finally coming forth and making the connection between human activity and the wild weather.


Woman photographs her own abortion to educate women and fight the ugly fear-mongering anti-choice protesters use.

Rush Limbaugh's phony empire.


Bees are smarter than supercomputers.

Monsanto gets an F.

Sunday, Sunday...

Martin Bashir calls out the GOP.

Bryan of Why Now? deals with the Florida voting rumpus.

Ladies do not need to talk about lady problems.  Let men do it for you.

Paul Krugman, European rock star.

Catholic hospital says no meds to HIV man.  Steve Bates predicted this asinine move.

Via Marcellina of the Practice Room, Das Rad (with English subtitles):

You're kidding, right? Right?

No.  You guys said it was ok.  Pandora's box has been opened.  Enjoy!

Says it all

And then some.

Things that make you go eep!

  Dying Honeybees: It Was the Insecticides All Along

With news that the U.S. honeybee population has been so devastated that some beekeepers will qualify for disaster relief dollars, comes a report from Purdue University that one of the causes of honeybee deaths is - as long suspected - neonicotinoids.
I say one of the causes, because the article does. In fact, the levels of neonicotinoid contamination of the powder used to spread seeds - up to 700,000 times the lethal dose - suggest that this pesticide may be the major, or precipitating, cause, with Varroa mites and other problems simply the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

  Snakes blamed for ‘severe declines’ in Florida wildlife

But from 2003-2011, surveys spotted a 99.3 percent decrease in racoons, 98.9 percent fewer opossums and no rabbits or foxes, said the article authored by Michael Dorcasa at Davidson College in North Carolina and colleagues at the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation and the National Park Service. Surveys also saw 94.1 percent fewer white-tailed deer and 87.5 percent fewer bobcats. These “severe apparent declines in mammal populations… coincide temporally and spatially with the proliferation of pythons in Everglades National Park,” said the study. During that period, annual removals of Burmese pythons have risen from less than 50 per year to 300-400 annually.

Bus-sized asteroid shaves by Earth

WASHINGTON: An asteroid about the size of a bus shaved by Earth on Friday in what spacewatchers described as a "near-miss", though experts were not concerned about the possibility of an impact. The asteroid, named 2012 BX34, measured between 8 and 18 m in diameter, said Gareth Williams, associate director of the U.S.-based Minor Planet Centre which tracks space objects. The asteroid had been unknown before it popped into view of the Catalina Sky Survey at Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona, and the Global Remote Telescope Network (GRAS) Telescope at the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico Arizona on Wednesday. It came within 59,044 km of Earth on Friday, said Williams, which is equivalent to about 0.17 times the distance separating Earth and the Moon. "It's a near miss. It makes the top 20 list of closest approaches ever observed."

UPDATE: Walker's Goons and Facebook Threats: You Signed a Petition, So We Know Where You Live!

The Government Accountability Board has been working long hours to scan the 1.9 million signatures into online and publicly accessible pdfs. They are done with the Senate petitions, and are just now finishing up the Walker signatures. The files are arranged as scanned pdf pages in sequences of 50, and can be seen here. A rightwing Walker support group, Verify the Recall, has been creating searchable databases of these pages, crowd-sourcing the data entry. It has been only a matter of (brief) time before the first threats of retaliation against petition signers should surface.

Optical illusion.

Things that go bump in the night...

And it's NOT Halloween...

Unexplained radiation coming from a shipping container.

Snakes in Florida that can eat deer.

Bank of America forecloses on house lost in hurricane.

Living in an oligarchy.

Greeks and Germans and the world economy.

The House of Representatives proving they are completely unable to think of how to create jobs.

Learning what living on 30 dollars a week for food is like.

Getting excommunicated by the Mormon church.

Reaching 7 billion people on earth and realizing that number doesn't affect an attitude change in those demanding that every sperm/egg union is sacred.

Quote to remember

Everyone is focused on Wisconsin, but I'd say that Florida is ground zero for Republican mismanagement. In 2012, I'm pretty sure that the Republican presidential candidate won't even want to be seen with most of the GOP governors that were elected in 2010.

God help us all

They're reserving the right to screw anybody?

Florida legislature fails to outlaw sex with animals.

Snakes!

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson delivered a vivid show-and-tell to lawmakers, unrolling the skin of a Burmese python killed in Everglades National Park, all 17 feet of it. Then he explained in graphic detail how a pet python half that size strangled a toddler in her crib last week in a town northwest of Orlando.

''It's just a matter of time before one of these snakes gets to a visitor in the Florida Everglades,'' Nelson told a Senate panel examining an invasive surge that poses increasingly expensive threats to native wildlife, crops, livestock and people.

Gregory Ruiz, a senior scientist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, estimated that exotics already have cost the United States $100 billion a year. He called current efforts to control and eradicate exotic creatures ''a patchwork'' in need of a major overhaul. It was a view echoed repeatedly during the two-hour hearing in Washington, D.C.

Blog sprinkles

Hilarious signs

Mofo snakes!:

THE EVERGLADES, Florida (Reuters) - The population of Burmese pythons in Florida's Everglades may have grown to as many as 150,000 as the non-native snakes make a home and breed in the fragile wetlands, officials said on Thursday.

[snip]

"They eat things that we care about," said Skip Snow, an Everglades National Park biologist, as he showed a captured, 15-foot (4.6-meter) Burmese python to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who was on his first fact-finding mission to the Everglades since the Obama administration took office.

With Snow maintaining a strong grip on its head, the massive snake hissed angrily at Salazar and the other federal officials who gathered around it at a recreation area off Alligator Alley in the vast saw grass prairie. It took two other snake wranglers to control the python's body.

"A snake this size could eat a small deer or a bobcat without too much trouble," Snow told Salazar before the secretary boarded an airboat for a tour of the Everglades.

How about small kids and elderly parents?!!1!? One more reason not to visit Florida....

How about making fuel efficient cars, you dimwits?

Industry Fears U.S. May Quit New Car Habit

Hunker down! The Mormons are coming!!

Blame already being prepared for the next inevitable terrorist attack.

Digby discusses an intelligent assessment by Richard Clarke about the Bush administration's reaction to 9/11. I think Clarke is being too kind. I believe the Bush administration had been waiting with bated breath to see what excuse (any excuse) they could use to attack Iraq, and although the attack was horrific, they used every bit of it to push their Neocon political agenda that had been waiting in the background for a decade. A decade. They just slotted tab A into slot B and they had their war.

The George Tiller this woman knew and loved.

Ameritaliban?

This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today. From the introduction to Part 1:

"Both [the Islamists and Neoconservatives] were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today's nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their pow

Mingora, Pakistan in the Swat Valley destroyed during the fighting. The Taliban must be pleased.

After all the bad press, the poisonous food and the deadly toys....

Here we go again... and again and again.... Now China is producing defective and smelly drywall:

(CNN) -- Officials are looking into claims that Chinese-made drywall installed in some Florida homes is emitting smelly, corrosive gases and ruining household systems such as air conditioners, the Consumer Product Safety Commission says.

The Florida Health Department, which is investigating whether the drywall poses any health risks, said it has received more than 140 homeowner complaints. And class-action lawsuits allege defective drywall has caused problems in at least three states -- Florida, Louisiana and Alabama -- while some attorneys involved claim such drywall may have been used in tens of thousands of U.S. homes.

Homeowners' lawsuits contend the drywall has caused them to suffer health problems such as headaches and sore throats and face huge repair expenses.

The drywall is alleged to have high levels of sulfur and, according to homeowners' complaints, the sulfur-based gases smell of rotten eggs and corrode piping and wiring, causing electronics and appliances to fail.

"It's economically devastating, and it's emotionally devastating," said Florida attorney Ervin A. Gonzalez, who filed one of the lawsuits. It would cost a third of an affected home's value to fix the dwelling, Gonzalez said.

"The interior has to be gutted, the homeowners have to continue paying mortgages, and they have to pay for a [temporary] place to live," Gonzalez said.

Apparently they aren't going learn any time soon that producing deadly products kills people and pisses off the ones that live. I put back on the shelf almost everything I can that has 'Made in China' stamped on it.

You better watch out, you better not cry

Because this church will find out what you are doing, with whom, and how long and then tell the entire congregation about it ... the congregation that includes your children:

Rebecca Hancock, 49, of Jacksonville, Florida may be done with the Grace Community Church and Rev. T. Scott Christmas, but they are not done with her. Hancock left the church after it demanded that she leave her boyfriend Frank Young because of their “sexually immoral relationship.” Her children, however, remained in the church. Now, the church was told her that if she does not leave the church, her sins will be exposed to the entire community.

Christmas has given her until December 8th to meet with the church and end her immoral lifestyle. Christmas told local media that he is doing “nothing more than following the practices of what biblical churches have done through history.”

But remember... God loves you.

Hatred beaten back

Two steps forward, one step back:

California officials will investigate whether the Mormon church accurately described its role in a campaign to ban gay marriage in the state.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission said Monday that a complaint by a gay rights group merits further inquiry.

Executive director Roman Porter says the decision does not mean any wrongdoing has been determined.

Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, accuses the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of failing to report the value of work it did to support Proposition 8.

A representative from the Salt Lake City-based church could not be reached for comment.

And:

A Miami-Dade circuit judge Tuesday declared Florida's 30-year-old ban on gay adoption unconstitutional, allowing a North Miami man to adopt two foster kids he has raised since 2004.

In a 53-page order that sets the stage for what could become a constitutional showdown, Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman permitted 47-year-old Frank Gill to adopt the 4- and 8-year-old boys he and his partner have raised since just before Christmas four years ago. A child abuse investigator had asked Gill to care for the boys temporarily; they were never able to return to their birth parents.

''This is the forum where we try to heal children, find permanent families for them so they can get another chance at what every child should know and feel from birth, and go on to lead productive lives,'' Lederman said in court before releasing the order. ``We pray for them to thrive, but that is a word we rarely hear in dependency court.''

''These children are thriving; it is uncontroverted,'' the judge added.

What I want to know is...

How did the archeologists know what they were looking at? They don't sell these at Wal-Mart!

KEY WEST, Fla. - Experts found a tiny gold combined toothpick and earwax spoon, believed to be more than 385 years old, during the search for a shipwrecked Spanish galleon off the Florida Keys.

The late 16th or early 17th century grooming tool, which weighs only about an ounce, was located Sunday by Blue Water Ventures diver Chris Rackley as he searched the area about 22 feet below the surface and 40 miles west of Key West. He says its value could exceed $100,000.

The divers, who are searching the shipwreck trail of the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita that sank in a 1622 hurricane, also recovered ceramic pieces, spikes, ships' fittings, rigging elements and two skeleton keys.

[snip]

Almost a year ago, Blue Water divers located gold bars, gold chains and a lead box containing thousands of pearls that were carried by the Margarita. The value of that find was estimated at more than $2 million.

I'd be digging in the ocean in a minute for such wonderful treasures if I wasn't so spooked by deep sea diving and sharks and weird blobby fish with teeth and sharks and stuff....