Blah=Blah Is Right

Thanks to RLK for this from the Cap Times.

J. B. Van Hollen, who last month was claiming that Wisconsin was a hotbed of international terrorist training and targeting, is now suggesting that Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager ought to stop enforcing environmental, workplace safety and consumer protection laws in order to meddle in the work of the Milwaukee Police Department. Referring to recent outbreak of gun violence in Milwaukee, Van Hollen demanded, "The attorney general is the chief law enforcement officer in Wisconsin. Where the hell is she?"Oh, did we mention that Van Hollen is not merely an interested observer? He's a candidate for the Republican nomination to challenge the attorney general in November. And he's sparing no hyperbole, or obscenity, in his hunt for votes. If Van Hollen were to pay as much attention to criminal justice issues as he does to trying to profit politically from the pain and suffering of Wisconsinites,....

Van Hollen is a local boy making bad. What a moron.

I Can't HaveSteve's Baby

I'm a guy, you see, but that's another story. Via A, at First Draft, we get a great post from the aforementioned Steve.

If these shitbags think we're cowering, they should think again.Jean Rohe's speech at the New School was not about peace and love, but why Osama's head wasn't on a pike, while Bush chased his manhood in Iraq. That's the problem. Osama being free while we murder Iraqi children and let the Heritage Foundation play government with other people's lives.

Multiculturalism is what happens when you live in the world and not behind a gate.

Benefit Of Northern Wisco

No love bugs.

The mere mention of love bugs, or Plecia nearctica, gets them talking about what the little flies feel like (tiny needles), what they taste like (petroleum products) and how to wash them off your hog (wipe with Bounce dryer sheets, then apply water).

From The City Of Big Shoulders

Good for Roger Ebert. He's not afraid to say he's a liberal. Now all you liberals in Washington, D.C., get the same spine Mr. Ebert has.

I want to write this review so every reader will begin it and finish it. I am a liberal, but I do not intend this as a review reflecting any kind of politics. It reflects the truth as I understand it, and it represents, I believe, agreement among the world's experts.
Global warming is real.
It is caused by human activity.
Mankind and its governments must begin immediate action to halt and reverse it.
If we do nothing, in about 10 years the planet may reach a "tipping point" and begin a slide toward destruction of our civilization and most of the other species on this planet.

After that point is reached, it would be too late for any action.

You Can't Make It Up Department

Bill Kristol - complete, fucking moron.

"Bill Kristol was discussing recent comments made by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameni -- then, in mid-comment, Kristol stopped himself and said, with no hint of irony, "Maybe we should have Supreme Leader Bush. I kind of like the sound of that."

Emphasis added. Via BuzzFlash.

I Wish It Would Falter Off The Oredock

We can only hope.

A decade-long drive to permanently repeal the estate tax is about to come to a head, but proponents are finding it surprisingly difficult to get their political football into the end zone.
....
Either way, the upcoming Senate debate is a pivotal moment for a coalition of wealthy families, small-business lobbyists and farm groups that has already accomplished a remarkable thing over the last decade: making a national political issue out of repealing a tax that applies to less than 1% of all taxpayers, including some of the richest people in the U.S

Emphasis added.

Music, Sweet Music & Big Rocks With Handles

I might change my mind about accordian music. I might. I just might. It's kind of like changing my mind about the sport of curling & the

"12 strong-willed and taut-figured female curlers "

This pic via Doghouse Riley.

Good Points

All upright, thinking people agree. Via firedoglake.

Which of the punk Bush supporting smear artists, virtually none of whom has ever served in uniform, who parade to the talkies to accuse almost anyone of being traitors, even cares about this: What kind of leaders send our troops to battle, unconscionably, so lacking in armor protection and equipment that the Marine Corps pathologist concludes, in the third year of the war, that 70% of the casualties were preventable? And then allow some of our wounded troops to return home and be charged for their sacrifice, and then pursued by debt collectors because they cannot afford to pay, and then be victimized by a Veterans Administration led by a former Republican Chairman that falls dramatically short of serving our heroes while creating the mammoth violation of privacy of veterans in the history of computers?

Think about this: America is engaged in a great battle of ideas against an enemy that murders children in houses of worship and cuts off the heads of the innocent, and our leaders have failed to win this battle even against an enemy so hideously evil.

And what is the response of Bush and Rove? When they are not demonizing the gays, they are waving the flag, preparing to challenge the patriotism of political opponents who prefer supporting those who wear that flag on their shoulder to using the flag as a partisan weapon in the endless political wars that will be the sad legacy of those who never learned that we are, indeed, in this together.

The reason America stands on the brink of an epic election is that this President, his party, and his apologist have let loose dark forces of division and dishonor that have divided our country, alienated much of decent opinion around the world, hurt our military, abused our freedoms in the name of a politics of fear and let loose in the land a kind of politics that violates the cardinal rules of two hundred years of the American family.

In this dark and demeaning vision of political war, anything goes, to win. A heroic Senator who will spend his life in a wheelchair as the price of his heroism is slandered by a guy who never served. A recipient of the bronze and silver stars is smeared because he is in the wrong political party. A Marine Corps hero who is one of strongest supporters of the troops who ever served in Congress is called a coward on the Floor of Congress. A Chief of Staff of the Army is demeaned by ideologues and partisans who were hell bent for a war they knew nothing about.

Six courageous retired Generals speak out with conscience and the editorial page of the Washington Times prints the statute on sedition. The cable talkies run segments with titles such as Hollywood Hates America. When the topic shifts to the atrocity of Haditha one of America's leading right wing mouthpieces says these things always happen in way and cites, shame, shame, shame, shame and infamy to him, the Marines who took Iwo Jima and the Army heroes who took Normandy with the slander that they too committed acts that were comparable to Haditha. Who in the hell do these bums think they are?

The infamy of Abu Ghraib, the wrongs of Guantanamo, secret government abusing secret prisons with secret injustice, and the Attorney General of the United States says the Geneva Convention is some quaint and outmoded relic which in my humble opinion were the most dishonorable, despicable and ignorant words ever uttered by anyone entrusted to preserve, protect and defend justice in America.

The man who sits where Washington sat, where Jefferson sat, where Lincoln sat, claims he has the unilateral, inherent power to abrogate even the Bill of Rights The man who put his hand on the Bible with the trust that the laws are faithfully executed claims he has the unilateral, inherent power to violate the laws of the land at his personal whim, and at this writing, there are more than 700 laws that he asserts the right to violate today. The man entrusted with the legacy of Founding Fathers who were among the greatest and most timeless visionaries who ever walked the earth, claims he can operate beyond the reach of courts, beyond the reach of Congress, without the knowledge of the American people.

Emphasis sadly added.

Science Sunday

I'm really glad that science has finally produced a study that supports the andedotal evidence that all of us have seen in our daily lives, if we have have been paying attention. Where I live, the main approach that the professional foresters have taken is one of poplar (popple) farming, to benefit the logging industry. I'm certainly not against loggers, I used to work in the woods myself, although my employer might balk at the word "work" - "let's quit, I quit" - was my mantra at the time, but this idea that the government owes these loggers a living is, well, out-of-date. Diversity is a good in all ways, whether it be plant species, rock species, animal species, yes, I include non-white people as well. People, not just environmentalists, have been warning of the potential disastrous effects of monoculture for a long time. The evidence is now in, monoculture is a bad method, a bad idea. What the agricultural interests have managed to do is continue to invent & use pesticides & herbicides to put off the devastation that will come with the continuation of monoculture, particularly in the Great Plains.

Biodiversity of global ecosystems has decreased as global population has increased, said Tilman, because diverse ecosystems such as forests and prairies have been cleared to make way for agricultural fields, buildings and roads.

The research shows that ecosystems containing many different plant species are more productive than those containing only one species. A return to biodiversity may prove to be the key, Tilman and his colleagues believe, to meeting energy needs for the growing number of people on the planet and for restoring global ecosystems.

"Diverse prairie grasslands are 240 percent more productive than grasslands with a single prairie species," Tilman said. "That's a huge advantage. Biomass from diverse prairies can, for example, be used to make biofuels without the need for annual tilling, fertilizers and pesticides, which require energy and pollute the environment. Because they are perennials, you can plant a prairie once and mow it for biomass every fall, essentially forever," Tilman said.

Progress

Just around the corner, I suppose.

Excluding the capital's nearly daily bombings, new Iraqi government documents show that more Baghdad residents died in shootings, stabbings and other violence in May than in any other month since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Goofiest Headline Of The Day

Rebirth for family planning clinic

A Good, Sweet Story

I was afraid of horses my whole life, but when I acquired a Gordon Setter that had great field trial potential, I decided I better get a horse, the easiest way to chase her around. I now have four horses, approximately three too many, but they have fundamentally changed my life. You know the studies that show how petting a dog or cat can lower your blood pressure, your heart rate, your respiration rate? Well, think about standing in the midst of two Tennesee Walkers & two Spotted Saddle horses. Two tons or so of beautiful medication. I should blog my guys someday. Someday soon. But here is a story about horses & wounded soldiers from Iraq, Bu$hCo's war of choice. Whoever came up with this therapy ought to be president, because this person has a heart.

Spec. Maxwell Ramsey made small kissing sounds as he tried to coax Wylie, a muscular black Percheron horse, over to the platform where the soldier stood. He swung the metal and plastic limb that is his new left leg over Wylie's back and sat down in the saddle.

"Relax your leg. Take a deep breath. Remember you are sitting on a big old cushion," Mary Jo Beckman, a therapeutic riding instructor, said to Ramsey as he and Wylie headed out into a dusty yard at Fort Myer.

The black and white horses that usually pull caissons during military funerals at neighboring Arlington National Cemetery are helping soldiers such as Ramsey in their long struggle to learn to walk again, to regain strength and to believe in their new limbs.

"It gives me the confidence to know that I lost an arm and a leg but not the ability to do certain things," 1st Lt. Ryan Kules, 25, a Tempe, Ariz., native who was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq in November, said Friday.

Junk Science

Absolutely.

A scientific journal plans to retract a 1997 study submitted by a PG&E Corp. consultant that suggested a contaminant released by the utility had no links with cancer.

The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine will note that the connection of parties with vested interests in the study was not disclosed at the time.

The study involved the groundwater contaminant hexavalent chromium. The release of that substance in Hinkley (San Bernardino County) was at the heart of the widely publicized lawsuit against PG&E in the mid-1990s recounted in the film "Erin Brockovich."

Science Saturday

Big hole found, not in Bu$hCo's brain. But, nonetheless, it caused mass extinctions.

Minnesota Stupid

Gov. Pawlenty appears to be another complete moron. A person can never underestimate the callousness of ReThugs. Pretty-boy Pawlenty proves this fact once again.

Child care advocates were disappointed -- and puzzled -- because such rating systems are used by 20 other states.

This one was specifically designed to prepare children for Minnesota's kindergarten standards, they said.

Minnesota has one of the highest percentages of working mothers in the nation. Parents have little information to rely on when choosing their licensed child care, even for infants, a Star Tribune investigation found last year.

Emphasis added.