Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, and I’m rushing.  Tomorrow is almost here.  I have been busy with housework and could not sleep.  Fortunately I did my research early this morning.  Day 21.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:05 (average 4:18).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: The huge Kelvin wave that formed in the Pacific a while back, and may bring us a big El Nino, is now reaching the surface.  It’s huge, and it’s one of the warmest ever recorded.  Here’s the latest from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center

The vertical scale is the depth of this pool of water, while the horizontal scale is the longitudinal location of the pool.  A back of the envelope calculation shows that the pool is roughly 5500 miles wide!  It seems reasonable to assume that water this warm and this amount of it, is going to dump a lot of heat into the atmosphere, and the resulting weather may not be very pretty for some people.

This may well be the source of the unseasonably hot weather I’m getting this Spring. Such events used to be less common and less intense.

From NY Times: Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has had a tough month.

Two of his fellow commissioners this week said he should delay introducing a new set of net neutrality rules, which he had scheduled for May 15.

A group of 11 United States Senators told him Friday that rules allowing companies to pay an Internet service provider for express-lane access to consumers, as the rules are widely expected to do, would violate the principle of an open Internet.

And last week, a finger-wagging, tough-talking speech he gave to cable television executives received a lukewarm response and engendered questions about what some listeners perceived as a “father knows best” tone.

Mr. Wheeler has vowed to forge ahead.

Late Friday, the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation released a letter from Mr. Wheeler, in which he said that he would ask for public input on whether to classify broadband Internet service as a sort of public utility, a route that many consumer advocacy groups have pushed…

Could it be that Wheeler designed a plan in compliance with a Republican court order to allow a corporate "fast lane" with the intent of stimulating opposition to that plan to use as a rationale for reclassification under Title II? Consider that Wheeler has supported Net Neutrality in the past. When the new rules are released, we must respond forcefully and often.

From Alternet: Charles Krauthammer continues the assault on science, calling it superstition.

Hey, Fox News managed to find another crazy, irresponsible idiot disguised as a sentient being to debunk facts and science: good old Charles Krauthammer. He said on Tuesday that the belief in global climate change is mere “superstition” akin to the “rain dance of Native Americans.”

Why would he say such a thing? Such a provably wrong thing? We have no idea. It could be wishful thinking. Sure, we wish this whole climate change catastrophe would go away, and that we could wake up from it like a bad dream. We wish all these meanie scientists conducting real research based on actual facts would just stop discovering that the news is so very, very bad, and bullying us about it.

Krauthammer took his point a little farther, about science actually being superstition. Yah, and the other way around, too. Up is down Charles. Black is white. No is yes. “It’s always a result of what is ultimately what we’re talking about here, human sin with pollution of carbon. It’s the oldest superstition around. It was in the Old Testament, it’s in the rain dance of Native Americans — if you sin, the skies will not cooperate.”

Still more crazy talk from Chuckie Kraut:

“Ninety-nine percent of physicists were convinced that space and time are fixed, until Einstein working in a patent office wrote a paper in which he showed that they are not,” Krauthammer said. “I’m not impressed by numbers, I’m not impressed by consensus.”

What does impress you Charles? On second thought, maybe don’t answer that.

This is just one of eight most wacko Republicans in their War on Science from last week alone. Click through for the other seven. Note that Krauthammer was not satisfied just to attack science. To the delight of the Republican Reichsministry of propaganda, Faux Noise, he also included a racist attack against Native American spiritual tradition. In sharp contrast, authentic Christian respect others’ beliefs.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow and am feeling quite tired having done three weeks of laundry, folded it, and put it away.  Therefore, I shall be brief.  Day 15.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:21 (average 5:51).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had been invited to give the commencement address at Rutgers University in New Jersey this month, said on Saturday that she would no longer give the speech. Her announcement came after weeks of protests by some students and faculty members over the university’s decision to invite her.

Protesters had argued that Ms. Rice should not have been selected as the speaker because of her involvement in the Iraq war during the Bush administration. Students staged a sit-in last week outside the office of the university’s president, Robert L. Barchi, to protest the speech, scheduled for May 18th.

On Saturday, Ms. Rice released a statement saying that she did not want to detract from the day’s festivities.

Condi Rice (R-Chevron) should be giving her speech at The Hague. Kudos to the students at Rutgers for rejecting a Republican war criminal.

From Roll Call (H/T Daily Kos): Rep. Janice Hahn just wanted to hear evangelist Billy Graham’s daughter speak at Thursday’s National Day of Prayer gathering on Capitol Hill, but she ended up storming out of the room before that portion of the program could get underway.

The California Democrat said she was appalled by the remarks of Dr. James Dobson, saying she felt he went against the event’s stated nonpartisan and apolitical intent by bashing Barack Obama and calling him the “abortion president.”

“We have this annual, national day of prayer, which is supposed to bring the whole country together to pray for our nation, and typically you put politics aside and you come together,” Hahn told CQ Roll Call. “James Dobson just absolutely violated that, and I really think he did damage to what we try to do up here in Washington, D.C.”

Dobson, the founder of the conservative group Focus on the Family and host of the radio talk show “Family Talk,” told those assembled in the Cannon Caucus Room that Obama’s promotion of policies forcing taxpayers to fund abortion services was “offensive to [his] very conscience.”

For Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians, if it isn’t hate-based, it isn’t prayer.

From Alternet: Glenn Beck: Hillary Clinton will have lesbian sex in White House.

Radio host Glenn Beck makes no secret of his distaste for Hillary Clinton. Another thing he dislikes: gay marriage.

Beck is not sure that Hillary is a lesbian, but he is sure she would be willing to say she is a lesbian if it helps her get elected. Of course, she would. This is a woman who had her daughter knocked up in order to be a grandmother while she is running for president. Hillary stops at nothing. Having shoes thrown at her. Doing whatever it is she is supposed to have done in Benghazi. Faking an aneurysm.

But the target here was gay marriage and all the politicians who opportunistically jumped on board to support it, all because of what Beck and his sidekicks scoffingly called “the arc of history.”

One of Beck’s sidekicks gave him an opening he just had to drive through when he mentioned that Hillary Clinton came out in favor of gay marriage last year.

“Did you just say, came out?” Beck asked with a little glint in his eye.

"I’m telling you," Beck said, "Hillary Clinton will be having sex with a woman on the White House desk if it becomes popular."

They all laughed and laughed, imagining that very scene.

This is just one of the seven vilest Republicans of last week. Click through for the other six.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow early in the morning.  Because I’m swamped with prison volunteer Board Meeting preparations, this is today’s only article.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:43 (average 4:18).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: Why Birth Control Needs To Be Covered By All Insurance Plans, In One Simple Graphic

In addition, nothing else prevents more abortions.

From Daily Kos: Rick Wiles is one of the more prominent talk show hosts on the right-wing fringe.  Among his guests in the past have been Tom Tancredo, John Fleming, Matt Barber, Harry Jackson and other big names on the far right.  They’ve continued to troop to his show even though he claims, among other things, that expanded rights for gays prompted North Korea to threaten nuclear war, that Columbine and Sandy Hook were carried out by "mind control assassins" and that North Korea threatened nuclear war with us because we’re moving toward expanded rights for gays.

Well, yesterday Wiles outdid himself even by his standards.  He called for President Obama to be thrown out of office by a military coup.  People for the American Way got a clip.

I warned in 2008 that Barack Obama’s mission is to instigate a second Civil War in America. His regime is deliberately ripping the country apart and if the US Military doesn’t take action soon to arrest Barack Obama and remove him and his regime from the White House, there will be no country left for the military to defend. We are on the edge of collapse as a nation. Jesus Christ is America’s only hope. Let us pray that Almighty God delivers us from this very real tyranny that seeks to persecute the saints of God.

If I had time, I’d give this seditionist Republican scumbag a "parade".  Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity is NOT Christian.  It is the opposite.

From Alternet: Detroit columnist Nolan Finley: Woman candidate is “milking the vagina business.”

Detroit News’ editorial page editor and columnist Nolan Finley displayed his ability to keep it real classy this week. Notoriously anti-Democratic and pro-corporate, he has long been using his perch to rabidly oppose the candidacy of Democrats, most recently Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schnauer and his running mate, Lisa Brown. This week Finley wrote:

[Brown’s] confrontational style will give the ticket the spunk the colorless Schauer lacks, but won’t broaden his appeal. Brown could help bring in campaign cash, however. She’s still milking the vagina business, and is a minor celebrity among feminists.

Wait, there’s a vagina business that can be milked? How come we did not know that?

What that curious term means to Finley is that Lisa Brown favors reproductive rights for women, which in his world (roughly the 1950s) makes her an extreme left-wing liberal.

Milking the vagina business.

What will the Republican woman haters club come up with next?

This is just one of seven Republican absurdities from last week alone. Click through for the other six.  Thou shalt NOT commit TEAbuggery!!

Cartoon:

Ben Franklin was its first President.