The Lord made Texas so everyone else could be smug about something..

 What’s the matter with Texas?

Congressman Joe Barton’s bizarre apology to BP last week is only the beginning. Ditto the newly released Republican Texas State Party Platform ably solidifying its worst stereotypes—calling for the re-criminalization of sodomy and making gay marriage a felony. Since the election of President Obama, the GOP’s Lone Star State delegation has developed a singular record of wingnuttery.
“Stepping off into secession,” said one statewide candidate, “may in fact be a bloody war.”
It’s almost like the conservative contingent from the great state of Texas is trying to embarrass their fellow citizens while providing Democrats with a one-stop-shop oppo file, in terms of nationalizing the campaign. In the last year alone, we’ve seen six members of the Texas Republican delegation—John Carter, John Culberson, Louis Gohmert, Kenny Marchant, Randy Neugebauer and Ted Poe—decide to sign-on as co-sponsors of the ‘Birther Bill’ snaking its way through the Congressional fringe, making them half of the bill’s total support.
We’ve heard Rep. Randy Neugebauer scream “baby killer” at Congressman Bart Stupak after he voted for health-care reform.
We’ve seen Rep. Louis Gohmert take to the House floor to denounce hate crimes legislation by bringing bestiality and necrophilia into the debate: “If you’re oriented toward animals, bestiality, then that’s not something that could be held against you ... which means that you’d have to strike any laws against bestiality. If you’re oriented toward corpses, toward children. You know, there are all kinds of perversions, what most of us would call perversions, some would say it sounds like fun, but most of us would say were perversions and there have been laws against them and this bill says that whatever you're oriented toward sexually that cannot be a source of bias against someone.”
And Texas Rep. Lamar Smith told a group of college students that “the greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack…The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias.” That quote will sound great if we’re attacked again.
Texas Governor Rick Perry rode to victory over the Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson despite—or because—he invoked specter of secession at Tea Party rally, saying: “There’s a lot of different scenarios,” he said. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that? Texas is a very unique place… When we came to the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that.” His Tea Party backed challenger Debra Medina went even further, making nullification a core campaign plank (“stepping off into secession may in fact be a bloody war") before imploding over 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Even the Texas Board of Education has been getting into the fun—last month they voted to reconfigure the state social studies curriculum with a conservative ideological agenda, complete with favorable mentions of Joe McCarthy and Phyllis Schlafly. Board member Cynthia Dunbar got the meeting off on the right foot by offering a pre-vote prayer for “a Christian land governed by Christian principles.” Not coincidentally, Creationism has also been making a comeback.
To be fair, it’s not just the Republicans who are getting a bit loopy from the Texas summer heat. The Democrats have a full-fledged Lyndon LaRouche-ite named Kesha Rogers nominated for Congress in Tom DeLay’s old district, running on a platform summed up by the sign she holds up at a busy inter-section: “Save NASA. Impeach Obama.”
America needs Texas sane, or at least not completely deranged. It’s is the second largest state in the nation, a place of beauty, pride and barbeque, the home of icons of independence like Sam Houston, Lyle Lovett and Molly Ivins. It was Ivins who described Texas politics as “the finest form of free entertainment ever invented” and “better than the circus,” but this year the fun under that particular big top is looking more and more like a freakshow, and the clowns are starting to scare the kids.
John Avlon's new book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America is available now by Beast Books both on the Web and in paperback. He is also the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.

WTF

White House guts bill that would rein in CEO salaries; you can stop them


Aaron Swartz has the news of how the White House is trying to gut a piece of legislation (passed by the House and the Senate) that would be key to reining in CEO compensation in large corporations: The current financial regulation bill -- in a provision passed by both the House and Senate -- would change that by allowing shareholders with 5% of the stock to come together and propose additional names for the ballot. But the White House is trying to gut this proposal at the last minute, and they've done it in an incredibly sneaky way -- they removed the letter s from the end of the word shareholders.

Now instead of shareholders whose stock adds up to 3% coming together, you have to be a single shareholder with 5% of the stock all by yourself. And for most big companies, there just isn't anyone like that. Take GE, for example -- its biggest shareholder only owns about 3.4% of the company.
So by removing a single letter, they managed to make this provision completely

Right on, Krugman

Economic reality versus ideology: spending cuts and recovery

Cory Doctorow at 9:59 PM Sun

In this week's New York Times column, Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman debunks the idea of heavy government cuts as a way to economic recovery:
The key point is that while the advocates of austerity pose as hardheaded realists, doing what has to be done, they can't and won't justify their stance with actual numbers -- because the numbers do not, in fact, support their position. Nor can they claim that markets are demanding austerity. On the contrary, the German government remains able to borrow at rock-bottom interest rates.

So the real motivations for their obsession with austerity lie somewhere else.
In America, many self-described deficit hawks are hypocrites, pure and simple: They're eager to slash benefits for those in need, but their concerns about red ink vanish when it comes to tax breaks for the wealthy. Thus, Senator Ben Nelson, who sanctimoniously declared that we can't afford $77 billion in aid to the unemployed, was instrumental in passing the first Bush tax cut, which cost a cool $1.3 trillion.

more reasons to be off the grid

Share Comments 683 Earlier this month, NASA warned that as the Sun wakes up from its "deep slumber," a massive solar storm could wreak havoc on our electronics, from satellites to the electrical grid, causing damages up to 20 times the cost of Hurricane Katrina.

But the Sun isn't the only threat to our electronic lifeline. National Geographic explorers the risk and consequences of the "electronic Armageddon" that could be caused by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) bomb.

An EMP bomb, National Geographic explains, is "a bomb that's designed to go above the atmosphere and release huge amounts of energy," some of which in the form of gamma rays. Such a weapon would cripple electronics, but not kill people.

"In less than a billionth of a second, the electrical intensity on Earth's surface would become so hot that microchips would fry, power lines would overload and the electric grid would collapse," says National Geographic, describing . "Everything with microelectronics in it would stop: your car, your computer, the subway. There would be no electricity."



Learn more about what would happen if an EMP bomb were ever detonated in the video below, then find out more about

This for a odd reason makes me hopeful.

The seed vault, built to protect the world's food supply in the event of a global crisis, is located on a remote Norwegian island in the Arctic Svalbard archipelago. It was built high enough to avoid rising sea levels, and deep enough into the mountain to be able to withstand a nuclear explosion. The vault is kept at a constant temperature of zero degrees.

knock me over with a feather

Ms. Strozzi, who was nominated for an Emmy award for her makeup work on the television show "So You Think You Can Dance?", was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone, according to the records. The campaign categorized Ms. Strozzi's payment as "PERSONNEL SVC/EQUIPMENT."

The payment on Oct. 10 made Ms. Strozzi the single highest-paid individual in the campaign for that two-week period. (There were more than two dozen companies that got larger payments than Ms. Strozzi). She easily beat out Mr. Scheunemann, who received $12,500 in the first half of October, and Ms. Wallace, who got $12,000

way to go.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann won the Best Writing award for his tribute to his mother Marie. "A Baseball Fan Named Marie" aired two days after his mother's death.

wonderful....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- BP took measures to cut costs in the weeks before the catastrophic blowout in the Gulf of Mexico as it dealt with one problem after another, prompting a BP engineer to describe the doomed rig as a "nightmare well," according to internal documents released Monday.

The comment by BP engineer Brian Morel came in an e-mail April 14, six days before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 people and has sent tens of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf in the nation's worst environmental disaster

This could save you life! (really it could.)

HOWTO remove a stripped screw with a rubber band

Cory Doctorow at 11:08 AM Sun

In theory, this looks like a pretty good way to cope with a stripped screw: use a bigger screwdriver and insert a rubber band between the tip of it and the screw-head to give you some traction. Never tried it, but it looks sound

In response to a posting on 'Everything in the medicine cabinet has expired."

Two famous quotes attributed to Lady Astor as said to Winston Churchill.

Winston once asked what he should come as to a masquerade party?
    "Sober." Lady Astor replied.
Once at a state function Lady Astor remarked.
    "Winston, If you were my husband I would put poison in your cup."
Winston replied. " I would drink it."

I always suspected....

The error: Abraham Lincoln was not a Republican when he won the 1864 election.



By changing the name of his party to “National Union Party”, Lincoln was able to court Copperhead (War Democrat) voters who would never vote Republican. More than just a name change, he selected the only southern Democrat senator not to resign his seat , Andrew Johnson, to run as vice-president. Despite a convention to raise support for mid-term elections, the Republicans in the party joined the ranks of the radicals. By March of 1867, Johnson was the only Unionist in office that had not defected and it became a splinter group of the Democratic Party although ironically the Republicans kept the name of National Union Republicans for a while and consider it part of their lineage.

Well worth the viewing.

Who would have thought that gangster rap would make the perfect soundtrack to presuppositional apologetics? This teaser showcases the documentary, Collision, to be released on DVD next month. Directed by Darren Doane, the film follows the debate tour of New Atheist author Christopher Hitchens and pastor Douglas Wilson. Both are sharp commentators. Both wield their humour with acerbic edge (say what you will about Hitchen’s bluster and lack of philosophical roots, he is still a witty and often entertaining writer). So an exchange between them is likely to be a fascinating subject for a documentary.



Debates are already a spectacle in and of themselves, with enormous drama and emotional investment (some may even argue that that is all they are). But this kind of film has the ability to take us even further into the drama. With slick cuts and its unique visual style, the film brings a whole new dimension to the event and to the argument that was the focus for the tour (“Is religion good for the world?”). Our culture has a clear obsession with the visual over the abstract and it will be interesting to see whether the film can successfully communicate some of the ideas that inspired the exchange in the first place, or whether the medium will swallow the message and engulf those ideas in the foreground of personalities.



The DVD comes out on the 27th (you can preorder now on amazon). You can also pick up the book there that Wilson and Hitchens both co-authored on the same topic. Also worth reading is their email exchange at Christianity Today.

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The more I know. The more I don't want to know.

Deepwater Horizon survivors: "Are you fckng happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen!"

Xeni Jardin at 9:58 AM Tue

Mother Jones continues its excellent coverage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and its aftermath with a piece by Josh Harkinson about eyewitness accounts from workers who were there when the rig blew up:
A prominent Houston attorney with a long record of winning settlements from oil companies says he has new evidence suggesting that the Deepwater Horizon's top managers knew of problems with the rig before it exploded last month, causing the worst oil spill in US history. Tony Buzbee, a lawyer representing 15 rig workers and dozens of shrimpers, seafood restaurants, and dock workers, says he has obtained a three-page signed statement from a crew member on the boat that rescued the burning rig's workers. The sailor, who Buzbee refuses to name for fear of costing him his job, was on the ship's bridge when Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell, a top employee of rig owner Transocean, was speaking with someone in Houston via satellite phone. Buzbee told Mother Jones that, according to this witness account, Harrell was screaming, "Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen."
Whoever was on the other end of the line was apparently trying to calm Harrell down. "I am fucking calm," he went on, according to Buzbee. "You realize the rig is burning?"
At that point, the boat's captain asked Harrell to leave the bridge. It wasn't clear whether Harrell had been talking to Transocean, BP, or someone else

Great....

BP's spill plan: they knew where it would go, that ecology would never recover, "No toxicity studies" on dispersants

Karen Dalton Beninato at neworleans.com writes,

I have obtained a copy of the almost-600-page BP Regional Oil Spill Response Plan for the Gulf of Mexico as of June, 2009, thanks to an insider. Some material has been redacted, but these are the three main takeaways from an initial read. The name of the well has been redacted, but if it's not Deepwater Horizon, then there's another rig still out there pumping oil and aimed at Plaquemines Parish.The three big takeaways, excerpted from Beninato's blog post: 1) In the worst case discharge scenario (on chart below), an oil leak was expected to come ashore with highest probability in Plaquemines Parish within 30 days

2) Spokespersons were advised never to assure the public that an ecosystem would be back to normal after the worst case scenario, which we are now living through.

3) Corexit oil dispersant toxicity has not been tested on ecosystems, according to the Oil Spill Response Plan. "Ecotoxilogical effects: No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product."