Saturday, March 21, 2009

The big shitpile, continued

funny pictures of cats with captions
Is the global economic shitpile created by crooked financiers whose collective Ponzi scheme collapsed? Matt Taibbi says that it's much more sinister than that. It's nothing less than a takeover by the Big Money Boyz of our financial system. Greenwald says we need to get angrier than we already are. Krugman says that Obama is wasting his political capital on more-of-the-same crap from people who got us into this mess in the first place.

I think Obama is sincerely trying to fix this, but he's getting bad advice from people like Geithner, a Bush holdover who just wants to save his buddies. This is a class of people who have nothing in common with the rest of us, don't see any problem with the way things are, and see it all as a game.

We're already in a class war, people. You don't get to pick which side you're on. It's time to fight back.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Time to rewrite the textbooks again

It appears that all those books, movies, illustrations, etc. showing dinosaurs as big, scaly creatures will have to go in the trash. The discovery of a new dinosaur, Tianyulong confuciusi, by Chinese researchers led by Xiao-Ting Zheng could possibly remodel conventional wisdom regarding the body covering of dinosaurs

Anybody who has looked at a dinosaur picture book more than once in childhood can remember dinosaurs in all their myriad shapes as having scaly or armor-plated skin. Over the last few decades, the discoveries of theropods, meat-eating dinosaurs with evidence of feathers has brought the idea of theropods covered in a coat of feathers. The early horned dinosaurs, psittacosaurs, left fossils with apparent quills over the back and tail. That was it for covering.

Until now. Tianyulong was found with impressions that resemble the proto-feathers of early theropods. One problem. Tianyulong was a heterodontosaur, an early branch on the tree on the other side of the main split; the Saurischia-Ornithischia division. That means all of the families of dinosaurs might have had some sort of covering at some point in their history. They might have been fuzzy or furry or downright shaggy.

Illustrators are going to have a field day.

Image by Xing Li-Da.

Monday, March 9, 2009

An honest Republican

So, let me get this straight....Bush gets a pass for 9/11 happening on his watch, because it was  *only* 11 months into his presidency, but at 6 weeks into my presidency, *I'm* responsible for all the dipshits selling low on Wall Street? ... What kind of
Nobody, Barack. But that won't stop some people from saying it. Via the Plum Line, Patrick McHenry, R-NC, speaks plainly:
“We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., an outspoken conservative who has participated on the GOP message teams. “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”
They don't give a damn about you, me or the country. Getting back in power is all they care about. That's why they miss this guy.
ACTORS

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Why we fight

Lee J and I became politically active because we feared that democracy was in danger here in America. We joined millions of other concerned progressives to turn the tide in the last two elections. Our efforts are bearing fruit. The Obama administration has begun disclosure of secret legal documents written by Bush administration lawyers. We knew it was going to be worse than we thought, and this is being verified

Progressives had already denounced Bush's trashing of habeas corpus and the 4th Amendment, but these memos show that his attorneys thought they could override the 1st Amendment and probably the entire Bill Of Rights as well. This is not hyperbole, this is confirmed the Bush administration's own writings.

A substantial percentage of Americans have no respect for democracy and are relentless in undermining it. Even the people we've elected can be infected by this. A dictatorship could happen here if we let them win. That's why we fight.