Category: Uncategorized

 
From PZ Myers:

That sounds like a good idea to me.

The plaintiffs, who include 21 people ranging in age from 11 to 22, allege that the government has violated their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property by failing to prevent dangerous climate change. They are asking the district court to order the federal government to prepare a plan that will ensure the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere falls below 350 parts per million by 2100, down from an average of 405 parts per million in 2017.

How can you argue against that? The Trump administration has a simple defense.

By contrast, the US Department of Justice argues that there is no right to ‘a climate system capable of sustaining human life’ — as the Juliana plaintiffs assert.

That is not the answer I expected.

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From Stinque:

We’ve been wondering for awhile what the number, the minimum number, of deaths is required to make a mass shooting a national story, the kind everyone talks about, can’t help talking about.

We started wondering last year, when three or four people were shot and killed one evening in our Denver area, and nobody noticed. Those are common now — between Pittsburgh and Thousand Oaks, there were eleven mass shootings, four or more victims each, and we didn’t notice those. We figured it takes double-digit fatalities to get noticed these days.

But Thousand Oaks was twelve, one more than Pittsburgh. One of the victims had escaped the Las Vegas massacre. That was in the news, Thousand Oaks was in the news, it’s not like Thousand Oaks wasn’t in the news. But the details, they came and went. You may have heard some. Then again, you may have missed a few. Thousand Oaks hasn’t been commanding national attention.

You know what has instead. Tuesday we had a significant national election. Wednesday we had a live presidential meltdown, followed by an abrupt firing, followed by an abrupt appointment. That’s what everyone was noticing Thursday morning instead of the slaughter of twelve people in Thousand Oaks, and that’s what they’re still noticing now, as well as Arizona and Florida and fires again consuming California.

It’s just been one of those weeks where there’s too much to notice, and the mass murder of a dozen people that doesn’t involve race or religion or children isn’t going to get noticed, because we know that story, the story of thoughts and prayers and nothing getting done.

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From The Baltimore Sun:

A man shouting a pro-Nazi and pro-Trump salute during a performance of “Fiddler on the Roof” in Baltimore has reignited discussions of anti-Semitism amid increases in hate crimes in Maryland and nationwide.

Audience member Rich Scherr said the outburst, during intermission at the Hippodrome Theatre on Wednesday, prompted fears that it was the beginning of a shooting. The man, who had been seated in the balcony, began shouting “Heil Hitler, Heil Trump.” Immediately after that, “People started running,” Scherr said. “I’ll be honest, I was waiting to hear a gunshot. I thought, ‘Here we go.’”

Samit Verma was seated in the balcony when he heard shouting and saw a man holding his hand straight up in a Nazi salute, he said in an email Thursday. Ushers rushed over to the man while audience members quickly made their way out of the theater and into the hall, Verma said.

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From Bob Felton in The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

Sometime around 1800 B.C., an Akkadian stoneworker chiseled into rock a remarkable story.

It seems there were two ranks of gods, important gods who made all the decisions, and lesser gods who did all the work. One day, assigned to dig some canals, the hot and dirty and tired worker-gods decided to go on strike; “You are killing us,” they complained.

The impasse was broken by this proposal: the important gods would create a new creature to do the hard labor, man, but the leader of the strike had to be sacrificed. It was so agreed, and man was created from the dust, the water, and the blood of the sacrificed god.

But, as so often is the case, there was a fly in the ointment — the men were noisy at night, and the gods weren’t getting proper rest. After several warnings, the gods decided to get rid of men and sent a flood to drown them all. Only one man and his family survived, Atrahasis.

It’s easy to see in this tale the roots of two of the Old Testament’s best-known stories, the Creation and Fall, and Noah’s flood.

Now skip forward almost 4000 years to a story that is true, to the copper mines in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

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From Green Eagle:

I would like to make a point about the Republican ploy of using signatures that don’t match to disqualify tens of thousands of Democratic votes. I don’t think this point has been made clearly enough:

Has anyone out there signed their name exactly the same twice? I mean, literally ever.

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From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

Nancy Pelosi has always been a good Democrat. She supports the liberal agenda. She is intelligent, knows the House rules better than anyone, and is not afraid to stand up to Donald Trump. She played a critical role in getting Obamacare passed. She is also the only woman in House Democratic leadership.

Those are facts.

I understand why the Republicans tried to demonize her in the 2018 election campaign. They didn’t have Hillary Clinton to attack anymore, and they needed a Democratic woman to attack to please their misogynistic base. Pelosi was the obvious choice.

But I do not understand why some Democrats (mostly my fellow progressives) want to also demonize her.

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From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

And now, for the inevitable non-apology:

“In a comment on Nov. 2, I referred to accepting an invitation to a speaking engagement. In referencing the one who invited me, I used an exaggerated expression of regard, and any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous,” Hyde-Smith said.

So you see, you haters are the REAL RACISTS for suggesting that the very white Republican from Mississippi, Cindy Hyde-Smith when joking about a lynching was being anything other than humorous.

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From Andy Borowitz and the Borowitz Report:

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said that those in favor of the recount had a “sick obsession with finding out which candidate got the most votes.”

“Democrats are going on and on about counting every last vote until they find out who got the most,” Trump said. “Since when does getting the most votes mean you win?”

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From Max’s Dad:

77 years ago my father tried to join the Marines. They said nah. Flat feet or something. So he joined the Army and spent the “4 worst years of my life” trudging around Europe stopping Nazis and fascists from murdering innocents, oppressing freedom and just being assholes. He never ever spoke of it except if the story involved humor, like stealing Generals jeeps cuz they were tired, having Italian POW’s tell him that Mussolini, Hitler and FDR were all “son of a beeches” or becoming friends with a German kid named Rolfie who would warn them of approaching “Panzers” though they always turned out to be American tanks.

My point? There weren’t any fucking bone spurs or flat feet that kept my Dad from doing whatever part he was assigned in defeating evil.

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From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

But America’s veterans are not the whole story. So, I’d like to use this Veterans Day post to acknowledge the unsung hero of America’s military prowess, the productive American citizen. No military as strong and as competent as America’s can exist in a vacuum. It requires something else – something indispensable – a great economy.

America’s economy, historically the most productive the world has ever seen, is the foundation that supports our military personnel.

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