And here's another one from my occasional contributor, Lee T., who is a Republican, but not one of the insane yahoos currently decimating the GOP. If the GOP had more Republicans like Lee we could probably get a few things done.
A few years ago when Sen. McCain was about to be nominated for the Presidency to represent the Republican Party, I told my poli-sci class that he needed to choose a woman, preferably Sen. Snowe if he wanted to win the Presidency whether the Democrats chose Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton in 2008. The reason for that thought process was and still is simple: generally women support the Democratic nominee, while white men support (the majority) the Republican nominee. Basically, Sen. McCain, a moderate and very well-respected Republican, would have easily defeated any Democrat with the right running mate. Instead, he chose Gov. Palin from Alaska who turned out to be not only a right-winger Tea Party type but also exceptionally ignorant not only of national events but also of international events and even world geography.
Many Americans absolutely admire Sen. McCain and were ready to go campaign for him but he ended up choosing a good looking, hot, sexy woman with a very empty brain. He should have chosen Sen. Snowe and right now we'd have a Pres. McCain and not a Pres. Obama. But we can't change history. Even my university students asked me, "where did he find that idiot?" Those were their words. College kids went about 8-2 for Sen. Obama.
Before you give too much credit to a Governor of a Big State like Alaska, Austin, Texas has more people than the whole state of Alaska.
I saw this interview (Former GOP Sen. Snowe: 'This Isn't a Party I Recognize'). Those of us who worked for and with the Republican Party for many years find it disheartening to see such a nice bright lady, politically and philosophically responsible, feel exactly as I do, totally estranged from the new right wing Tea-Taliban-Republican Party. Look what's going on right now in Washington, the minority faction of the Republican Party, the Tea Party, now controls Speaker Boehner and he has shut down the government just to please a few anarchists (protect the Speaker's Chair, his Chair).
These Tea Partiers, starting with Sen. Cruz of Texas, was called out today by several very respected Republicans, including Sen. McCain and Rep. King. "Ted Cruz is a fraud and a con man, he is a liar". These words came from his own colleagues, a Republican nominee for President, and a powerful Republican chairman of a House committee. It's a sad day in American history and in the history of our Republican Party to see one party destroyed by a minority faction of anarchists.
My position is that I will not allow myself to be a slave to anyone's political ideology, particularly when that ideology is an extremist ideology, just like the Taliban.
Thus, what used to be the Republican Party but a few years ago became the Party of No, than the Party of hate, and now the Party of Anarchy. All this is happening for one simple reason, the Republican Right Wing is trying to undo Pres. Obama's health care legislation, his pride and joy which had been tried since 1898 and finally succeeded. They are merely trying to break his trophy legislation and they are willing to destroy the government and millions of American people just to make their point. Of those 800,000 federal employees furloughed yesterday, 23,800 are in San Antonio. Let's not forget the domino effect to our surrounding businesses. Damn, we can't lose the breakfast taco business in San Antone, that's our economy next to the medical and military industries.
The Republicans in the House need to remember and accept the following facts: Mr. Obama was re-elected on the issue of the ACA; He won Romney's state; He also won Ryan's state; He even won the Speaker's state, Ohio; He won the House majority leader's state, Virginia, and he won twelve of the thirteen contested states; He overwhelmingly won the Electoral college. He won. That's it and Republican Tea partiers cannot accept the loss. In political science we call it an electorate and Electoral victory, in Texas we call it an Ass Whipping. That's the bottom (no pun intended) line.
One other reminder, the Republicans vehemently opposed the Social Security program, yet they did not call it "FDR care" and Mr. FDR was elected four times. (There were no presidential term limits at the time) The Republicans vehemently opposed Medicare but they didn't call it "LBJ Care", in fact they made fun of President Johnson. I don't hear one single Republicans trying to legislate to get rid of Social Security or Medicare. The Republicans opposed Medicaid very strongly also but 50 years later we know how important it turned out to be for millions and millions of people, including some of you on my distribution list or some of your family members. Now we have the ACA legislation, improperly called "Obamacare" by the Republicans, and they're trying to repeal it or defund it so it can't operate. That is not going to happen. As of today, 4.8 million people signed into the website to look over or sign up for the program.
People who do not have health insurance overwhelmingly support the program. They didn't have health insurance for one of two main reasons, or both: Insurance companies would not accept them due to a preexisting condition or they could not afford it. The ACA took care of both problems.
I think the President was right in pursing this legislation. I think the Congress was right in passing this legislation. And, I think the Supreme Court was right in upholding this legislation as constitutional. Interesting, it was a Republican Justice who made the majority vote, CJ Roberts.
After you get through bitching at me, or about me, think of the following:
Where would millions and millions of Seniors be today without Medicare?
Where would millions of disabled people be today without Medicare?
Where would millions of Seniors, widows, children, or disabled people be today without Social Security benefits or Medicare?
Where would millions of Americans, especially children, be today without Medicaid?
Ten years from now, ask yourselves, where would millions of college kids/citizens who can't afford or do not get health coverage from parents or employers be?
There is a lot more here than meets the eye, the ACA is merely the springboard for the future of American politics in Congress and who controls future legislation. If you want to hear about it, let me know and I'll explain it to you. But the bottom line is that it's all about future VOTES and who controls the House and Senate for many years to come as happened after 1932. Check your political history books.
Here is my final point as to why Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to the last drop of blood to derail the ACA (Obamacare).
In five to ten years, during which time some 41 to 48 million people will sign up under the ACA. Where do you think their political loyalty will be placed?
Start with our failing education system that places more emphasis on sports than on education.
Add in toxic talk shows like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, Neil Boortz, etc.
Then top it off with an entire "news" network dedicated to slamming the Democrats, exalting the GOP, and obfuscating important issues of the day. (can you say "FOX NEWS"?)
And we end up with a nation of morons. Arrogant and proud morons. Bigots. Racists.
Ultimately, we end up with the United States House of Representatives. All this in the "greatest country in the world." Or at least we used to be.
It's pretty fucking sad. USA! USA!! USA!!!
The Reign of Morons is Here
by Charles Pierce
What are they all looking at? History, of course. MEET THE MORONS
Only the truly child-like can have expected anything else.
In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress -- a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.
We have elected the people sitting on hold, waiting for their moment on an evening drive-time radio talk show.
We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.
We have elected a national legislature in which Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann have more power than does the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been made a piteous spectacle in the eyes of the country and doesn't seem to mind that at all. We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade that believes that its opposition to a bill directing millions of new customers to the nation's insurance companies is the equivalent of standing up to the Nazis in 1938, to the bravery of the passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and to Mel Gibson's account of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the 13th Century. We have elected a national legislature that looks into the mirror and sees itself already cast in marble.
We did this. We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.
This is what they came to Washington to do -- to break the government of the United States. It doesn't matter any more whether they're doing it out of pure crackpot ideology, or at the behest of the various sugar daddies that back their campaigns, or at the instigation of their party's mouthbreathing base. It may be any one of those reasons. It may be all of them. The government of the United States, in the first three words of its founding charter, belongs to all of us, and these people have broken it deliberately. The true hell of it, though, is that you could see this coming down through the years, all the way from Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address in which government "was" the problem, through Bill Clinton's ameliorative nonsense about the era of big government being "over," through the attempts to make a charlatan like Newt Gingrich into a scholar and an ambitious hack like Paul Ryan into a budget genius, and through all the endless attempts to find "common ground" and a "Third Way." Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country's higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.
What is there to be done? The first and most important thing is to recognize how we came to this pass. Both sides did not do this. Both sides are not to blame. There is no compromise to be had here that will leave the current structure of the government intact. There can be no reward for this behavior. I am less sanguine than are many people that this whole thing will redound to the credit of the Democratic party. For that to happen, the country would have to make a nuanced judgment over who is to blame that, I believe, will be discouraged by the courtier press of the Beltway and that, in any case, the country has not shown itself capable of making. For that to happen, the Democratic party would have to be demonstrably ruthless enough to risk its own political standing to make the point, which the Democratic party never has shown itself capable of doing. With the vandals tucked away in safe, gerrymandered districts, and their control over state governments probably unshaken by events in Washington, there will be no great wave election that sweeps them out of power. I do not see profound political consequences for enough of them to change the character of a Congress gone delusional. The only real consequences will be felt by the millions of people affected by what this Congress has forced upon the nation, which was the whole point all along.
Among other things, the Library Of Congress is closed as a result of what the vandals have done. Padlock study and intellect. Wander aimlessly down the mall among the shuttered monuments to self-government. Find yourself a food truck that serves monkey brains. Eat your fucking fill.
Charlie has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America. He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.
I love this woman. I sure wish we could come up with great people like this in Texas. Instead we get yahoos like Louie Gohmert, Ted Poe, John Culberson, Steve Stockman, Rick Perry, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, among many others.
They say everything is bigger in Texas. The idiots are no exception.
Do you need some mystery in your life? If so, then look up, at night, if it's not cloudy.
SkyTips: October 2013
Blue-Green Giant
Subtle bands of color highlight this Hubble Space Telescope view of Uranus, the
solar system's third-largest planet. The planet puts on its best showing of the
year in early October, although binoculars or a telescope are needed to see it.
[NASA/STScI]
Stargazing Summary
A pair of eye-catching conjunctions highlights the mid-month skies. Venus and
Antares team up low in the southwest at sunset, while Mars and Regulus get
together in the east before dawn. A string of constellations that represent the
Celestial Sea line up low across the south in mid- to late evening: Capricornus,
Aquarius, Pisces, Cetus, and Piscis Austrinus. Eridanus, the river, joins them
by around midnight.
If you want to start hearing the StarDate program in your area, you can request
a station to carry our program by emailing the request to stations@stardate.org.
October 1-6: Mapping the
Stars. A new space telescope will soon take flight. Its goal is to make the
most accurate measurements yet of the distances to a billion stars. Join us for
Gaia, plus a gentle appearance by a green giant and much more.
October 7-13: Mars on
Earth. A team of geologists is headed for Mars this week. Not the planet
itself, but a spot on Earth that's a lot like the Red Planet. Join us for Mars
analogs, plus an encounter between the planet and a bright star.
October 14-20: The Autumn
Star. Fomalhaut is one of the few bright stars associated with autumn nights
— a brilliant beacon that's all on its own. We'll talk about the star and about
its unusual planet, plus a peek at the Hunter's Moon.
October 21-27: Moon
meanderings. The Moon passes the bright eye of the bull this week. It also
passes the brilliant planet Jupiter, the Red Planet Mars, and the heart of the
lion. Join us for these and other beautiful encounters in the night
sky.
October 28-31: Under Attack. This week
marks the anniversaries of two attacks on Planet Earth — one by the Sun, and
another from the Planet Mars. Join us for these celestial onslaughts, plus a
great view of Mars and much more.
Hear
StarDate every day on more than 300 radio stations nationwide. Find an affiliate»
Coming up in StarDate Magazine
In our November/December issue, find out how one astronomer is creating a white
dwarf star in a giant machine. And learn about the massive swirling storms on
our solar system's largest planets called 'polar vortices.'
Come Kick Off our 75th Anniversary in Austin, TX., Oct 19
You're invited to join McDonald Observatory in Austin on Saturday, Oct. 19 to
kick off our 75th anniversary celebrations! Free events include a 6 p.m.
reception and 7 p.m. talk by Dr. Frank Bash at the Blanton Museum's Edgar A.
Smith Building on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. Frank Bash
served as director of McDonald from 1991 to 2003. His talk on "The Frontier and
McDonald Observatory" will discuss how the observatory, founded on the western
frontier in the 1930s, is now probing problems at the frontier of science,
including the mystery of dark energy. Parking is available in the Brazos Garage
adjacent to the museum.
Unraveling
a 20-Year Dark Matter Mystery Astronomers at The University of
Texas at Austin believe they have discovered the answer to a 20-year debate over
how the mysterious cosmic "dark matter" is distributed in small galaxies.
Graduate student John Jardel and his advisor Karl Gebhardt found that the
distribution, on average, follows a simple law of decreasing density from the
galaxy's center, although the exact distribution often varies from galaxy to
galaxy. The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal
Letters.
Revealing
Starbirth in the Milky Way with ALMA Thanks to data detected
with the ALMA radio telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array,
University of Texas at Austin astronomers and others were able to detect a star
in formation — a protostar — that appears to be one of the brightest and massive
found in our galaxy.
Get Social with us
Keep up with all the news and video from McDonald Observatory on all your
favorite social media platforms. "Like" us on Facebook, "follow" us on Twitter,
and subscribe to our YouTube channel!
SkyTips is a monthly email newsletter for visitors to McDonald Observatory and
StarDate Online. Each issue features stargazing highlights, upcoming StarDate
radio program descriptions, and other news. Please feel free to forward this
newsletter to your friends and family.
SkyTips is a publication of the
University of Texas McDonald Observatory Education and Outreach Office, 2609
University Ave. A2100, Austin, TX 78712. Reproduction of SkyTips content is
permitted with proper credit given to McDonald Observatory.
Self-explanatory. The Blogger system is spitting up again, so no telling what you might be able to see or not see (Nazi?) on this site. Working on it. Sorta. Meanwhile, you can click on any post in the "Clickable Blog Archive" just below.
I'm just a regular atheist guy who gets sick of all the bullshit and wonders where the time goes? Oh, and I really appreciate beauty, as in women, and nature.
