Thursday, August 26, 2021

Want to report a legal abortion because you don't like it? (update)

 You can thank Texas for the chance!

"Rather than entering some information that some drone can scroll through, submit a real name, complete with a real ZIP code, and a real town. Use a real out-of-state health care provider, and create a vague but plausible narrative. If you need a sample of such data, I strongly suggest using www.followthemoney.org, which indexes FEC filings, to identify GOP campaign donors in Texas. The site even allows you to show a donor's town and ZIP code-- everything you need for your report. If anyone ever does take attempt to take a look at reports through the site, the righteous garbage will be much better camouflaged, and no innocent person ever need be bothered in the "investigation" of your report."



Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Strangely alike

 


Everyone should be Antifa....(updated)

 


 But then we have to remember that the desire for authoritarianism and a strong man dictator is a part of human nature and we will have to watch out for it and fight against it continuously.





Wednesday, August 18, 2021

Guess who?

 

They want this to be Biden's mess and so will stand in the way of any progress.

These 16 Republicans voted against speeding up visas for Afghans fleeing the Taliban


These Republican House members voted against the bill: 

  • Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona 
  • Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado
  • Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama
  • Rep. Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee
  • Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina
  • Rep. Bob Good of Virginia
  • Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona
  • Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia
  • Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma 
  • Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia 
  • Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky
  • Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama
  • Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania
  • Rep. Bill Posey of Florida
  • Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana
  • Rep. Chip Roy of Texas




  •  

Changing of the Climate

At nearly 4,000 pages, the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is massive. These five lines highlight their findings.







Thursday, August 12, 2021

Eight years of suffering under President Obama....

 "Trump supporters say, 'We suffered 8 years under Barack Obama.'

Fair enough. Let’s take a look.
The day Obama took office, the Dow closed at 7,949 points. Eight years later, the Dow had almost tripled.
General Motors and Chrysler were on the brink of bankruptcy, with Ford not far behind, and their failure, along with their supply chains, would have meant the loss of millions of jobs. Obama pushed through a controversial, $80 billion bailout to save the car industry. The U.S. car industry survived, started making money again, and the entire $80 billion was paid back, with interest.
While we remain vulnerable to lone-wolf attacks, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully executed a mass attack here since 9/11.
Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.
He drew down the number of troops from 180,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan to just 15,000, and increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
He launched a program called Opening Doors which, since 2010, has led to a 47 percent decline in the number of homeless veterans. He set a record 73 straight months of private-sector job growth.
Due to Obama’s regulatory policies, greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 12%, production of renewable energy more than doubled, and our dependence on foreign oil was cut in half.
He signed The Lilly Ledbetter Act, making it easier for women to sue employers for unequal pay.
His Omnibus Public Lands Management Act designated more than 2 million acres as wilderness, creating thousands of miles of trails and protecting over 1,000 miles of rivers.
He reduced the federal deficit from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2009 to 3.2 percent in 2016.
For all the inadequacies of the Affordable Care Act, we seem to have forgotten that, before the ACA, you could be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition and kids could not stay on their parents’ policies up to age 26.
Obama approved a $14.5 billion system to rebuild the levees in New Orleans.
All this, even as our own Mitch McConnell famously asserted that his singular mission would be to block anything President Obama tried to do.
While Obama failed on his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, that prison’s population decreased from 242 to around 50.
He expanded funding for embryonic stem cell research, supporting ground breaking advancement in areas like spinal injury treatment and cancer.
Credit card companies can no longer charge hidden fees or raise interest rates without advance notice.
Most years, Obama threw a 4th of July party for military families. He held babies, played games with children, served barbecue, and led the singing of “Happy Birthday” to his daughter Malia, who was born on July 4.
Welfare spending is down: for every 100 poor families, just 24 receive cash assistance, compared with 64 in 1996.
Obama comforted families and communities following more than a dozen mass shootings. After Sandy Hook, he said, “The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.”
Yet,
he never took away
anyone’s guns........
He sang Amazing Grace, spontaneously, at the altar.
He was the first president since Eisenhower to serve two terms without personal or political scandal.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
President Obama was not perfect, as no man and no president is, and you can certainly disagree with his political ideologies. But to say we suffered?
If that’s the argument, if this is how we suffered for 8 years under Barack Obama, I have one wish:
may we be so fortunate as to suffer 8 more."
by Teri Carter, Lexington Herald-Leader

Monday, August 02, 2021

Simple Science

 

I'm going to vastly oversimplify, because so many people are vast simpletons.
A virus needs a host.
It can't stay in one host long, because either the host dies or the host adapts and kills the virus.
The virus doesn't just move to the next host, it multiplies and each of its "children" jumps to a new host.
Each time it does this, it "learns" from its host so the children adapt to be more successful in the next host. That's what the variants are (this is not strictly true, like I said I'm oversimplifying.)
Masks deter the jump. They do. They just do. They are like a border wall if it actually worked. The higher grade the mask, the higher the wall and the fewer beasties can jump it. If the virus in one host can't jump to another, eventually it will either be killed or the host will die and it will starve (or at least be buried/cremated with the host.)
Vaccines don't deter the jump. They can make it harder for the virus to "win" the battle and kill the host. They can make the host harder to stick in (so it doesn't have a base to jump from,) or faster at killing the virus.
So here's the thing. If everyone had just worn god damn masks at the start, the virus would have died off before it mutated. If everyone had gotten god damn vaccinations as soon as they became available, the virus would have died off. But because they didn't, the virus was able to "learn" how to jump harder and stick more often and kill faster. That's why we have the delta variant. That's why the vaccines we have aren't enough on their own any more. That's why we'll never get out of this pandemic.
All of you anti-science morons whining that the CDC was wrong because _they_ are adapting are the same ones who refused to mask up and get vaccinated in the first place when the simple guidelines could have put an end to this before it got out of hand. It's YOUR FAULT that I can't go to dinner and a show without wearing a mask and forgoing any physical contact. You. You are responsible.
So shut the fuck up, get a vaccine, wear a god damn mask, and when science comes up with the next thing for you to do, DO IT. Because frankly, I'm fully vaccinated and won't get very sick, but it's pretty easy for me to become a delta carrier; and I'm sort of hoping science will get desperate enough to recommend coughing on all you idiots and wiping you out to stop this lunacy once and for all.