Don't forget to vote

Just so you know.

Adventures in stupidity

If this was fiction, it would be edited out for being too stereotypical, but it's real:

I tell ya, we’ve got some new problems in Washington. Big problems. Just today, Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said people in America are not eating enough fruits and vegetables. They want to give all the power to the federal government to force you to eat more fruits and vegetables. This is what the federal, CDC, they gonna be calling you to make sure you eat fruits and vegetables, every day. This is socialism of the highest order!

GzeroP Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia.

Seriously, people? You want them back in power?

Nobody could have predicted....

We're having a cool summer here in Sonoma County. It's wonderful. I'm grateful to live here when I read about the muggy, sticky steam bath that the rest of the country is suffering in.

Those of you having to endure that, can take a tiny bit of comfort in the fact that others have it worse:

The extreme heat has led to the worst drought conditions in European Russia in a half-century, prompting the Russian government to suspend wheat exports. The drought has caused extreme fire danger over most of European Russia (Figure 3), and fires in Russia have killed at least 50 people in the past week and leveled thousands of homes. The fires are the worst since 1972, when massive forest and peat bog fires burned an area of 100,000 square km and killed at 104 people in the Moscow region alone. Smoke from the current fires spans a region over 3,000 km (1,860 miles) from east to west, approximately the distance from San Francisco to Chicago.

Stephen Andrew explains what this would be like here:

To put this in rough perspective -- and note this is not absolutely precise, it's purely ballpark to give you some feel for what the Russian people are enduring -- if this heat wave was hitting North America, it would be near 100°F in Fairbanks, Alaska. Most of Canada would be baking at 100° or higher, the northeast, from Maine to the Great Lakes region would be hitting upwards of 105° everyday, even the nightly low in the massive urban heat islands of New York and Chicago would be over 90°! The midwest grain belt and parts of the Pacific Northwest would not see a drop of rain for two months and pushing as high as 110° in places. The desert southwest, even some of the higher elevations of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas, would be as uninhabitable as Death Valley or the Sahara.

A nightmare scenario that, sadly, we have been warned about for many years. Nobody wanted to hear it then, and people still don't, now. The problem with all of this is that these nightmare scenarios are now reality, and this reality will get worse. How much worse depends on what we do next.

Want

The Porsche 918 Spyder concept car has been greenlighted for production. Why do we care? Well, as a former 911 owner who still likes fast cars, but is also a realist who understands that gas-gulping supercars contribute to our mounting environmental collapse, this car shows you can have the best of both worlds.

500 horsepower from the gas engine to the rear wheels, along with another 218 HP from electric motors on the front wheels. 0-60 in 3.2 seconds. 198 mph top end. 78 miles per gallon.

Along with Tesla's pocket rocket that doesn't use any gas at all, and the amazing White Zombie, it shows that motorheads are warming up to petroleum alternatives.

If Republicans take Congress in November

The fine folks who shut down government for an extramarital blowjob vow more of the same if they regain the majority:

According to Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., the House Republicans should exercise their power to subpoena and hold continuous hearings. Speaking to a gathering for the GOP Youth Convention on July 22 in Washington, D.C., she emphasized this point.

“Oh, I think that’s all we should do,” Bachmann said. “I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another. And expose all the nonsense that is going on. And it’s very important when we come back that we have constitutional conservative leadership because the American people’s patience is about this big.”

Did you get that? No legislation, no efforts whatsoever to solve the nation's problems, just one witch hunt after another for at least two years. These people still love George W. Bush and think he did a fine job. These are the stakes for this election.

Who they really work for

Tony Hayward was supposed to be grilled by congress but Joe Barton(R-TX) couldn't help himself. Republicans were furious that he let their true intentions show, and made him apologize for apologizing. Republicans and their Teabag lackeys are supposed to be for the little people, but don't let them fool you. Their allegiance is to corporations, not the Constitution.

Victory is sweet

Jill wins!