Nasa News: Maven Rover arrives at Mars

For years now, the tea baggers and their preferred party, the Repubnorants, keep yammering and whining big government can't accomplish anything. 

Well, morons, NASA can go to Mars, with 1 Rover on the surface still exploring and now with MAVEN probe designed to study the Martian atmosphere arriving today.

Would it surprise anyone if the current thin atmosphere of Mars resulted from global warming eons ago?

Repubnorants actively fight science by, among other things, slashing the budget of the space agency.  Don't want to hear facts about climate change and melting of polar ice caps?  Slash the budget of NASA programs that study our Earth.

Dipwads.

Let's hope all those marching today actually vote.  


[NASA's Maven spacecraft is on track to reach the red planet late Sunday night following a journey spanning 10 months and 442 million miles.

If all goes well, the robotic explorer will slip into Martian orbit for a year or more of atmospheric study. It's designed to circle the planet, not land.

Maven will be the first spacecraft to focus on the upper atmosphere of Mars. Scientists believe the Martian atmosphere holds clues as to how Earth's neighbor went from being warm and wet billions of years ago to cold and dry. That early wet world may have harbored microbial life, a tantalizing question yet to be answered.]
NASA's Maven explorer arriving at Mars after year

Picture courtesy NASA, view from Mars Rover, this is freakin' Mars, people.  Mars!  It's Mars, bitches!

"Islam is not a religion"

Holy crap on a stick and sold as a lollipop, where do they find these morons?  Of course Islam is a religion, and the constitution of the United States of Rational America says Muslims shall have the right to freely practice their religion.

Then, the 1 lunatic sez she has been on Iranian TV.  I severely doubt some whack job from Murfreesboro gets on TV in Iran except as warning for kids to stay off drugs.

This gets even more pernicious as activists in my home town in Brevard County, FL, have fought for years over textbooks used local schools saying in part history texts give too much time to teaching about Islam. Welll buddy, save for Islamic libraries and educated class, all traces of Greek philosophers would have disappeared into the hearth fires of feudal masters during the Middle Ages.  We would have lost algebra and the convept of "0" in mathematics.

The FL Confederacy of Dunces known as the Legislature wants to give counties more control of textbooks. So the more conservative counties may choose not to teach evolution and instead try to elevate creationism to the level of science.  Screw science any way.

Hey, kids, let's try multiplication with Roman numerals!

Jim Cornette Shoots on Republicans NSFW

And I mean shoots, blasts, devastates, detonates and sweeps the shards into a dustbin and throws them out with the rest of the right wing garbage.

True confession: I am an absolute mark for old school wrestling of the 60's and 70's, when Lou Thesz ruled and real wrestlers went into wrestling and it just wasn't this gqgarbage foisted upon the fans who have nothing better to spend their $ on.

Jim Cornette, as a manager of the Midnight Express and brilliant booker, occupied a special place in the pantheon of bad guys.  So with him from Nashville, TN. never would have believed he sounded more like me than me.

You rock, Jim!



[Despite the alleged requirement for separation of church and state, the gerrymandering of districts that has led to the election of the Tea Party whackjobs to the House of Representatives has also led to the placement of a number of really, REALLY religious people in position to make public policy. These people want to hold you down, slice the warts off your soul, suck the fat out of your heart and replace it, whether you want them to or not, with the word of God. These people are dangerous, and we need to recognize that fact sooner than later, or we're in for more trouble than a shutdown of the government or even an economic catastrophe. 

The story behind every religion on Earth is so ridiculous that, in my mind, no rational human could believe it, but many people I like and even respect do, and that's their right, even if I don't get it. I've learned to just overlook it because examing it too closely would drive me insane. But like a mirror image, the religious politicians can't fathom why someone like me CAN'T believe in this stuff, and they're determined to make sure I have no choice, because unlike me, THEY are invested with the power to dictate laws and make public policy.

They exhibit that arrogant, TV evangelist-like pomposity that indicates they know something you don't know, and talk to you like you're someone who just wandered off from a state home as they explain to you how there can't possibly be any other belief, despite all evidence to the contrary. They attempt to make laws that force their right to believe into your right to DISbelieve like an intentional sideswipe on the interstate, to force you off the highway to Hell and into the comforting ditch of the Lord. They campaign to make laws based on the word of God instead of the realities of life and Man, and the fact that they are sometimes successful scares the shit out of me.

Just one example out of way too many? Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia's 10th district, a medical doctor who spent 10 years doing "house calls" because he's licensed to practice medicine in exactly ZERO hospitals in Georgia. An NRA member and 2nd amendment fanboy who genuinely believes Barack Obama is a socialist, he believes in God and family values--he should, he's been married four times--and he has some interesting beliefs about science as well. He thinks global warming is a "hoax"--that the Earth was created in "six days as we know them" and is "about 9,000 years old"--and that the theory of evolution and the Big Bang are "lies straight from the pit of Hell". Compounding these troubling statements is the fact that somehow, Paul Broun has been appointed Chairman of the Investigations and Oversight Committee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee!! His ludicrous public statements led to over 4,000 write-in votes for Charles Darwin in his last election. And he wants to run for the Senate in 2014! Despite the calls and cries of many in the educational and scientific communities, even Bill Nye the Science Guy, that Broun has "no business making any decisions related to science or technology", he's still there, folks. And he's just one of them.

We're poisoning the Earth and changing the climate, but Broun and others like him don't believe it, because in one Christian conservative's words, the planet will survive forever because "God promised Noah after the flood he would never destroy the Earth again". In 50 years, when Boston and Miami are under water, these geniuses will say it was "God's will" and someone will blame it on gay marriage.

They talk about the American people's rights and freedoms, but don't want anyone outside their group to have any--the right to marry who you love, the right of a woman to use birth control or choose whether she has children, the right to health care or any progressive policy put forth by the Democrats--but for some reason almost all of them believe you should have the right to own as many guns as you have the money to buy and the room to store. That's probably because lots of them are also preparing for an armed citizenry to take over the country from the evil Muslim President and return us all to God.] emphasis added

http://jimcornette.com/cornettes-commentary/politics-religion-and-cosmetic-surgery-soul

From Davis Frum's Pen to God's Ears: Teabagger crazies may kill RepubliKKKan party

Of course, that would amount to a good thing for these mouthbreathing idiots to come back to reason, common sense, and fact based reality.

[...Meanwhile tea party Republicans have bounced from Sarah Palin to Donald Trump to Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to (now) Herman Cain, transfixing the media every time they lose faith in one messiah and search for another.

Yet sooner or later, the tea party Republicans must converge on a single choice. When they do, they will present the non-tea party Republicans with a troubling menu of possibilities.

For non-tea party Republicans, this second outcome opens all kinds of ugly, ominous possibilities. If candidate Romney loses, tea party Republicans will claim that the GOP lost because it failed to nominate a "true conservative." That claim may fly in the face of political math (how would a more extreme candidate win more votes?), but it will pack a lot of emotional punch. Intense partisans are always ready to believe that the way to win is to be more intense and more partisan...

For three years, Republican activists have lived in a fantasy world in which fringe characters like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain somehow "speak for the common sense of the common people." It seems incredible that anybody could believe such a thing. It seems crazy that anyone would actually need a presidential election to disabuse them of such notions. But as Benjamin Franklin said: "Experience is a hard teacher, but fools will have no other."]  http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/31/opinion/frum-republican-tea-party-scenarios/

Health Insurance Gap in TX

Gee, silly me thought compassionate conservatism meant trying to help poor people survive. Guess that only worked in 2000 while stealing an election. Now, the naked hate and barbarism of Tea Bagger party has come out in plain view, cheering Governor Goodhair's (TX) sanctioned executions of near 250 human beings and the death of someone without health insurance.

At long last, Teabaggers, have you any shred of human decency left?

Texas miracle my ass!

[...But for the more than 6 million Texans without health insurance, these world-class institutions remain largely out of reach. Texas has the highest rate of uninsured people in the country - 24.6 percent - and the number of uninsured that has grown by 35 percent during Governor Rick Perry’s 11-year tenure. And here in Harris County, which includes Houston, the state’s largest city, the picture is even more troubling: One out of three people lacks insurance.

“This is ground zero in the health care disaster,’’ said Dr. Leonard Zwelling, an oncologist at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. “Houston is such a rich city, with some of the best medical care in the world… . And yet the people without insurance have a heck of a time getting into most of these facilities because they can’t pay...’’

And in a state where 16.8 percent of children are uninsured, more than all but one other state, only half of Texas children have a medical provider who knows them and coordinates their care. More than a third of them have not received recommended medical and preventive care within the year, and immunization rates are low as well. Texas also ranks last in the country in the percent of children who receive needed mental health care.

Doctors recount horror stories of uninsured patients who die of treatable diseases because families delay seeking medical help or must endure long waits for appointments with specialists.

Dr. Katherine Yudeh King, a pediatrician at Ben Taub General Hospital, which serves a large uninsured population, said one of her patients, a 15-month-old boy, died from dehydration due to diarrhea because his family brought him to the hospital too late, assuming they could not afford care.

“This is the type of thing that happens in Somalia and other developing nations, not something that should happen in Houston,’’ said King, one of the founding members of Doctors for Change, a group that advocates for universal health care in Harris County.

Other doctors tell of uninsured children dying from vaccine-preventable diseases such as influenza and hepatitis A, and patients being admitted into the emergency room for uncontrolled asthma and diabetes. Doctors here routinely see untreated infections of the ear, sinus, or tooth spreading to the brain, requiring surgery, and bone infections that result in permanent disability.

“This is an everyday occurrence,’’ said Dr. Claire Bocchini, another Houston pediatrician who specializes in infectious diseases and is president of Doctors for Change.

As underfunded as the state’s health safety net has been, conditions stand to worsen. In the last legislative session that ended in May, the state cut two thirds of the funding for women’s health clinics and underfunded Medicaid by almost $4 billion, in addition to cutting hospital reimbursements. This follows other health cuts in the Perry years...

The burden of the Texas health care crisis falls largely on the working poor. Most of the state’s uninsured adults have jobs and are US citizens or legal residents, according to the nonpartisan Center for Public Policy Priorities. Working adults account for nearly two out of three uninsured Texans between ages 19 and 64, though most of them make less than $25,000 a year.

An example is Joyce Jones, a 60-year-old yoga instructor earning $20,000 a year who said she cannot afford private health insurance because she has Parkinson’s disease, a preexisting condition that would increase her premiums.

Jones has maxed out three of her credit cards paying for health care and has more than $30,000 in credit card debt. She is in the process of signing up for a high-deductible plan for people with preexisting conditions, made possible through the new federal health overhaul law - “Obamacare,’’ as Perry and other GOP candidates call it.] emphasis added
http://articles.boston.com/2011-09-25/news/30201319_1_health-care-preventive-care-mammograms-and-colonoscopies

Who Gets Government Welfare? You Do!

Dummkopfs, pinhead tea bagging protesters , driving over federally built highways and riding in Medicare paid electric scooters waving your "Taxed Enough Already" signs, how could you fall for RepubliKKKans big lies?

[The same people who complain with such vigor NEVER seen themselves as the recipients of government largess. Well, it turns out that MANY of those people are both delusional AND full of shit. Here is a handy dandy chart – from a paper by Dr. Susanne Mettler — showing the percentage of people who have gotten, or are getting, government assistance, but who think they have never used a government social program. These are the kinds of people who join the Tea Baggers and hold aloft signs saying, “Keep Government out of my Medicare”.] emphases indicate links in original at http://bettyfokker.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/guess-who-uses-government-programs-you-do/

"God is not a member of the North Lake Tea Party"

Don't worry loyal minions, yours truly has already castigated the unbeliever, pointed out not only does THE Lord God Almighty lead the lake County, FL, tea party, he also pilots, co-pilots, navigates and wields the bomb sights to rain down his Holy Hellfire upon such apostate agnostics, and atheists of the press.

[So perhaps it is those long years of being marginalized and ignored that produced the glassy-eyed rah-rah attitude that fit snugly with the jingoistic program drawn up by organizers. They pushed every emotional button within reach — recognize veterans, sing "God Bless America," get a pastor to assure them that God not only approves their mission, but is probably behind it.

Now, that last is a particularly slippery slope. When folks start believing that their political mission is ordained by God, bad things tend to happen. After all, the Bible's well-known advice on government was to give Caesar what he wanted and move on. In other words, earthly government is not the concern of the righteous person.

So let's be clear: God is not a member of the North Lake Tea Party. And infusing a political event with the notion that a divine being is pushing a particular political ideal is a special kind of evil manipulation which hopefully will merit a special punishment sometime later during eternity.

There were plenty of good, decent folks in the First Baptist Church on Monday, but there wasn't two thimbles full of independent thought, and that was precisely the way Rick Scott wanted it.

Which brings us to the single most-distressing slice of the rally: how far the governor of a big, influential state will go to set up a captivated audience of adoring fans. Scott is a wily one. He must know that he couldn't have unveiled a budget so poisoned with untruths to anyone actually familiar with state finance.] emphasis added
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/lake/os-lk-lauren-ritchie-tea-party-florid20110213,0,2128195.column

Tea Party Secrets: Old, mostly white 'ceptin' for Toms, and full of shite

[Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the {tea party} crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.

"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"


Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about.]  emphasis added
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904

Found at Surburban Guerilla.