Month: July 2017

 
From Green Eagle:

Lest we forget, a little news about the situation in Fukushima, from Newsweek, via Yahoo:

“While much progress has been made to clean the area, the company has only just resolved the debate over what to do with the water that was used to cool the plant’s damaged reactors, causing it to become tainted with tritium.”

What to do…what to do… Oh wait, I have an idea:

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From Blue in the Bluegrass:

No, I mean it. Freedom OF religion is also Freedom FROM religion, so let’s have a fair fight.

Truthfully, Bevin’s new Inquisition is not new. When I was in Kentucky high school in the 1970s, there was an English class elective in “The Bible as Literature.” Everybody took it because easy A, right?

“Bible Literacy,” however, is quite a bit more blatant about its religious indoctrination.

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From The Journal of Improbable Research:

What might you gain (or lose) by interrupting someone? The question has been experimentally examined by Professor Sally Dew Farley, of the Psychology department at the University of Baltimore, US. Experimental subjects who had been asked to discuss an article were systematically interrupted by confederates – revealing the following :

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From PZ Myers:

Honestly, if you’re thinking of moving here or even just vacationing here, don’t. You’ll get shot. By the police.

They’re out of control. They’re armored up, loaded with weapons, and poorly trained. 661 people have been murdered by the police this year, so far. It’s insane.

The latest incident occurred nearby, in mild, liberal Minneapolis. An Australian, Justine Damond, was shot for no good reason. She had apparently called the police to report a disturbance in an alley.

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From David P. Greenberg at MadMikesAmerica:

All over the news, you’re hearing one word over and over again: Evidence. Proof. That “smoking gun.” We all know Trump did the crime, but with no proof, we can’t make him do the time.

But, I’ve got another word for you.

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From Shaun Mullen at The Moderate Voice:

There will be no single smoking gun that will bring down this White House.
It will be death by firing squad . . . as the whole story inexorably pours out
of the administration’s smoldering ruins. ~ FRANK RICH

From the outset of what became known as the Russia Scandal, three big questions have predominated. Did the Russian government interfere in the 2016 presidential election to try help elect Donald Trump? Did the Trump campaign collude with Russia in that effort? And did candidate Trump himself know of the interference and collusion?

The first question was answered definitively a year ago. Yes, there was a Vladimir Putin-directed cyber conspiracy to sabotage Hillary Clinton because Trump was seen as being considerably more sympathetic to Russia’s global interests.

The second question was answered definitively over the weekend. Yes, the Trump campaign’s inner circle, including family members Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner, enthusiastically colluded with Putin’s surrogates.

The third question has not yet been answered definitively, but soon will be. Yes, Donald Trump actively encouraged the collusion while claiming the interference was “fake news” and subsequent investigations a “witch hunt.”

All that, in turn, raises a fourth question: Isn’t it time for Trump to go? Of course it is, but not so fast there, kemosabe.

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From The Onion:

WASHINGTON—Responding to an unsettling incident that has raised concerns about worker exploitation within the organization, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced Friday it was launching an investigation into working conditions within Habitat for Humanity after a 92-year-old laborer reportedly collapsed on a job site yesterday.

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From Jonathan Bernstein:

This is what getting jammed looks like:

That’s right. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell new plan is to ask Republicans to suspend reality until after casting their vote: Regardless of what the bill actually says, it means whatever they want it to mean. To state the obvious, this is not exactly a strong position.

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Wondering why a few conservative friends are less than impressed.

• Being well past middle age, I admit to being too old to be young. But I’ll never be too old to be immature. Still, I nobly resist juvenile impulses to tie this in with lame conservative excuses for Trump-Russia illegalities:
   
  In an unusual post, author and book reviewer John Scalzi at Whatever purchases and reviews a product designed to eliminate a specific bathroom odor nanoseconds after it is produced during a common biological event.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein considers the argument that the Trump campaign meeting with a Russian government operative was an event anyone would have attended.
   
• Stinque examines by photograph the new conservative thought that, when Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort accompanied Donald Junior to that illegal meeting, the Trump campaign was actually being set up by very clever Democratic agents.
   
• So a self-described Trump operative kills himself. Green Eagle speculates about the meaning of this latest piece of the Trump-Russia jigsaw.
   
• Frances Langum watches as Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, is asked for his reaction to Russia-Gate and the flow of new revelations. He gives it with the bark off.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post doesn’t much like the way America is continuously embarrassed by my President.
   
• Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass considers the gleeful decision by Kentucky’s governor to throw 90,000 elderly folks out of nursing homes. Our beloved Aunt Tildy has seen the language and begs any children who click the link to cover their ears while they read.
   
• T. Paine, at Saving Common Sense, joins in the outrage at the resistance of British medical folks to keeping alive a newborn with severe mitochondrial disease. My old friend T. Paine is especially angry at the medical explanation: letting the little one die is for his own benefit. The heart of the controversy is whether the parents should be allowed to transport the baby to a US expert for last ditch treatment. To an uninformed person, which is to say me, that seems like a clear case of parental jurisdiction.
   
  T. Paine blames the medical intrusion on the universal availability of free health care. I do recall a similar case of jurisdiction in Florida, where the government lost, and Terri Schiavo was allowed to die. That seems to have been before Obamacare.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce experiences yet another effort by an evangelical to reach out to him. The first email explains that “You are filth to it’s core.”
   
• David Brooks writes a well meaning, condescending, article about unreported glass ceilings that are unintentionally constructed against the lower classes. PZ Myers manages to cool down enough from his irritation to explain where Brooks goes wrong.
   
• driftglass explains to Matthew Dowd why he is not Galileo.
   
• The Intersection of Madness and Reality suggests that about the only purpose Rob Kardashian was put on Earth was to prove men are trash. I’m guessing this is not an endorsement.
   
• The Journal of Improbable Research finds a scientific study on whether bees are attracted to pictures of flowers.
   
• Neil Bamforth at MadMikesAmerica cites statistical data, as well as personal experience, in a sad lament of how man’s best friend kind of isn’t anymore, at least in Britain.
   
• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from People.com with a profile of Kellyanne Conway. Featured is Chuck Todd explaining patiently to her that alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods.