It's hard out there for a Sith

It's been five years since the Prequels, residuals are drying up, and kids just want to talk about the Clone Wars series. Then, at Comic-con, everyone is lining up to meet the Avengers and some son of a bitch stabs you in the eye. So a Sith Lord has to take drastic steps to make some cash.

He can't even afford a good ride.

You win this round, blacks

In case you missed the "big" story of the past week, let me recap. Dubious right wing smear merchant with a history of lying and editing videos in a misleading way, Andrew Breitbart, posts up video of a USDA employee, Shirley Sherrod, apparently claiming that she, a black woman, once denied help to white farmers because they were white. Outrage ensues, Fox News and the right wing media blow the story up, constantly trumpeting it. The NAACP and the Obama Administration, successfully baited, offer up statements of condemnation, with the Agriculture Department eventually firing Sherrod. Once again this proves to the Breitbart/Fox News crowd that black people are the true racists and that white people are currently the only true victims of racism.

But wait, it turns out that the liar with a penchant for editing videos in a misleading way, Andrew Breitbart, was a liar who edited a video in a misleading way. It turns out Sherrod was relay that story as the first half of a story in which she reveals in the second half that she realized the error of her ways, learned about racial harmony, and went on to help that white family save their farm. The white farmers were interviewed saying how Sherrod was a close friend and had helped them out tremendously. Oh, and this had happened 24 years ago. NAACP, the Obama Administration, and the news agencies that pilloried Sherrod and got her fired are forced to offer grudging apologies, and the Agriculture Department offers Sherrod her job back. This is all recounted here. And also here.

It was all a disgusting display of how lying, phony outrage, the 24-hour media cycle, and cowardice combine to turn this country into and awful and stupid place. It was even enough to get Keith Olbermann back from his vacation to pillory everyone involved for perpetrating this bullshit or falling for this bullshit. Truly a sight to behold. He's angry!

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Well, you win this round, blacks. Sure you may still be able to intimidate whites with your New Black Panthers, but we're on to you and your racist ways. But it's important we come away with three thoughts in the aftermath of this: 1.) blacks are way more racist than whites, who, despite some foibles that ended in the 1800's, are totally not racist anymore. 2.) Andrew Breitbart is in no way to blame for any of this, the racist NAACP and black President are. 3.) It was wrong to fire Sherrod for being a racist, which she probably isn't. She should have been fired for being a dirty left-wing socialist liberal, with leftists liberal plots that seek to liberalize an un-liberal America. LIBERAL!

Are we clear? Now go back to living in constant fear that the blacks are coming to take our shit.

My favorite space show after Pigs In Space

Picture of the day

Yesterday, in part of Fox News's never ending commitment to shill for industry and downplay their mistakes at all opportunities, Brit Hume took time out of his busy days chastising Tiger Woods to become Christian to offer up his brilliant insights into the Gulf oil spill.

WILLIAMS: First of all, don’t you think, this spill now is going to be in excess of what happened with Exxon Valdez.

HUME: Let’s see if that happens. There’s a good question today if you are standing on the Gulf, and that is: Where is the oil?

Well Brit, the oil is all over the fucking Gulf of Mexico. Thankfully NASA has satellites far enough into space that they can actually capture the magnitude of the disaster. Which, for your edification Brit, is far beyond a mere Exxon Valdez or two at this point.

Click to embiggen or click here to even further embiggen.

You'll note that all the murky stuff that' bracketed by azure blue... is the fucking oil. With the darker oilier spots being the parts where it's just pretty much all oil. Rather staggering isn't it?

As a bonus the picture also kindly shows the beginnings of that whole thing we'll be talking about over the next few days: the Gulf Loop Current taking the oil to the Florida Keys and Florida Gulf Coast. Happy times.

Conspiracy~!

You might have thought that in all this hullabaloo about drilling rig explosions, oil replacing water as the main liquid in the Gulf, environmental disaster this, decades to clean up that, poor sea turtles the other, that this all somehow presented a comprehensive case against offshore drilling. It hasn't.

I mean sure, if this disaster was the result of years of lobbying against safer practices and regulation, poor oil company safety standards, and lax safety standards, you might have a point. But it wasn't. Hold on to the tops of your skulls, because I might just blow your mind. IT WAS ALL THE RESULT OF A LIBERAL CONSPIRACY!! DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNN! And if you don't believe me, surely you'll believe the leading lights of the conservative movement.

Limbaugh added: "[W]hat better way to head off more oil drilling and nuclear plants then by blowing up a rig? I'm just, I'm just noting the timing here."

Dana Perino said of the spill: "I'm not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory, but was this deliberate? You have to wonder...if there was sabotage involved."

Fox Business Network host Eric Bolling falsely claimed it was "nine days before" the leak "was even addressed" and asked, "Did they let this thing leak? ... if they're going to try and pull drilling, that may be the way they do it."

Heckuva Job Brownie: "And I would not be surprised if the White House said, you know what, we might be able to, guess what, do what? Use this crisis to our advantage. Let this crisis get really bad, and then we will step in. We will be able to shut down offshore drilling."

SEE! It's all so clear now. Clearly this isn't an offshore drilling/oil company/safety/regulation problem, this is a liberal terrorist/sabotage/government conspiracy problem. I haven't done enough research, but the Sasquatch and the mole people may be involved. We may have drilled into their underground lair or something.

Sure, liberals/reverse vampires set charges on the rig and then Obama, who secretly hates offshore drilling despite all those statements and plans to support it, waited 8 days, no, 9 days, no, 12 days, no, 7 years, before lifting a finger in order to discredit offshore drilling! Obama's Katrina! Conspiracy! Spy satellites are watching us!

So in the end we have learned, like always, that corporations are never responsible for anything and that things with obvious dangerous environmental hazards aren't dangerous at all. It turns out that everything would have run smoothly if it weren't for those damn meddling kids and their overarching conspiracy to drag down our corporate betters into the mire. Isn't that always the way?

Humility defined

When last we saw Grampa Senator he was denying his maverickyness to the masses while losing ground in a primary to a certifiable loon.

So our shadow president went to Fox News to gain that momentum back, but even Fox News couldn't let that "I ain't no maverick and I never said I wuz dangblastit!" remark go. So Senator McCain decided to make things a whole lot clearer and, in the process, show great humility with the new nickname he devised for himself. Remember it now, he'll be disavowing it in a week.

WALLACE: You said, I never considered myself a maverick.

MCCAIN: Well, all I — what I was saying was that I have considered myself a person who’s a fighter. I wouldn’t be around today if I wasn’t a fighter. I fight for the things that I believe in, and sometimes that’s called a maverick. Sometimes that’s called a partisan. And people can draw their own conclusions. I prefer great American myself.

Ah yes, the true mark of a humble patriot: bestowing the title of Great American on oneself. I mean sure, we got used to this kind of thing when he declared himself the "Original Maverick"... except that the whole phrase, definition, and political connotation of 'maverick' comes from the last name of an actual guy, Texas legislator Samuel Maverick, but still. Plus it is a better nickname than the one Obama gave himself: God King of the United States, Woe Unto You Who Speaketh His Name.

So really, could you just stop calling him a maverick. One, he doesn't know where you even picked up that nonsense. Two, he'd much prefer Great American, or, if you'd prefer, Greatest American, or, better still, American So Great They Ought To Retroactively Put His Name on The Declaration of Independence. It's what he deserves to be called before he's forced to take up the moniker Private Citizen and Former Senator John McCain.

Thanks for keeping us updated

Serial liar and toad-like goon Dick Morris had a busy morning on Fox News warning American about it's imminent death. And not the symbolic "death of freedom and liberty" type stuff either. Real death. Two separate predictions. That's a pretty good streak. Most completely unreliable liars can only get off one completely misinformed proclamation of imminent doom during an appearance.

Let's get to his first. You may have thought that health care was only going to gank your grandparents and yoke you to a system where tribunals decided whether or not you were fit to live or die based on a loyalty oath you'll take to the disembodied spirit of Vladimir Lenin. Nope, it' only the end of medicine... that is unless you vote for the GOP.

"If we are unable to defeat Obama in 2010... there will be permanent harms in the country and one of the big ones is a nation without doctors."

Clearly. That's the step after "cover everyone", "2. eliminate all doctors". It all makes so much sense now that's it's put in such clear terms. Uninsured insured -> elimination of practiced medicine.

Now tell us how we're all going to die a biological death from a snickering Kim Jong-Il because the President hates the country.

It's the most outrageous thing, I think, I've ever heard a president of the United States say. He's literally saying that if an American city were gassed or hit with a biological weapon and millions were dying in the streets coughing their lungs out, or in hospital wards dying of an incurable disease, we would not use nuclear weapons to reply? It is totally absurd. It's beyond belief that a president of the United States would say that and it shows that Barack Obama might be, might be the first anti-American president we've ever had.

He isn't literally saying that. Not in the slightest. If only there were a nightly comedy news show that tackled this.



But Dick can't be expected to do things like read treaties or watch comedy programming. So I pass on his warnings to you: elect Republicans or medical knowledge will vanish from the earth just like it did in every other country with socialismed medicine... which won't matter much anyway because we'll all be dead of nuclear anthrax because the President is anti-American. Clear? Ok.

Positive trends

We all worry about the Klan and other fringe white supremacist groups. Are they doing OK? Is membership on the rise? Is this vital part of America still thriving? In recent years that answer has sadly been a definitive "no". But thankfully that trend is reversing.

According to the SPLC, there has been “a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009, growing from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 groups in 2009. Newsweek also notes that recent years have seen a resurgence in membership in the Ku Klux Klan:

Fear of “the other” has long fueled hate crimes, from the torture and lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan beginning in the late 1800s, to the violence of the 1950s and ’60s, to the virulent anti-immigrant groups today. In 2008 the Census Bureau announced that whites will make up only half the U.S. population in 2050. “That was a big deal,” says the SPLC’s Potok. In recent years white-power groups mushroomed and the Klan reversed declining membership.

Gee, I wonder what triggered that rise? /sarcasm Oh sure, black President and all, but who knew that statistics projections and mathematical models from the Census did some of the heavy lifting as well. I thought we were all supposed to be in a "fear the Census they're collecting information for some nefarious means" mode, not a "boy, they do have some useful tools to fuel my racism" mode.

I shouldn't give all the credit to the half of this country that elected a black and the method by which we apportion our representative government. Who can forget the role conservative media sources have played in stoking flames and portraying whites as some aggrieved minority?

Now I know some are going to jump right to the tea baggers and the tea party movement and say "Are they counting them in these figures too?" I'm guessing not. But if there's one thing we learned about them over the past few days is that they're too focused on porn and bestiality to focus too hard on the racism part. Isn't that always the way? Plus they've got that Turner Diaries style militia to build in Oklahoma, more time to spend claiming kinship with the confederacy, and they've got to dangerously co-opt the military. Busy, busy, busy.

So congratulations to America. We have responded to a historical election and continued economic problems in the way we know best: with dim-witted hysteria and by retreating into fringe racist organizations with such staggering speed that it alarms non-profits that track that sort of thing. Well done.

We will burn in nuclear fire

Today the United States and Russia signed a new nuclear arms reduction pact. It was a stirring ceremony where President Obama strode to the stage, took the irrepressibly tiny Dmitri Medvedev out of his right front pocket, set him on a toadstool, patted him on the head, and went and sat at his chair. Medvedev looked over to Vladimir Putin who flashed a thumbs up and released Medvedev's children from the secret location he was holding them, and the treaty was signed.

The treaty, if ratified, would require each country to deploy no more than 1,550 strategic warheads (down from 2,200), each would be limited to 800 total land, air and sea-based launchers (down from 1,600 permitted under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991), and would re-implement a inspection regime and legal framework that had lapsed last December with the expiration of START. It's sensible, is a reduction in nuclear weapons, restores critical inspection measures, and gets us back on good diplomatic footing with Russia... so I'm sure this will come nowhere near getting the 67 votes needed to pass in the Senate.

Indeed, with this and the recent release of the Congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review, only one question remains: how has President Obama just insured our nuclear death with these reckless measures towards our precious, precious A-Bombs? Well as right wing pundits quickly informed us: by apparently ensuring that we would not retaliate if comrade Lenin rose from the grave and sent a first strike at the heartland.

Watch Fox News freak out:


Mmm, so reckless towards our safety and yet... so hot. The way her eyes bug out as she contemplates Obama sentencing us to an irradiated exploding death... she cares about our future.

Of course it's bullshit, as we still keep our first-strike strategy, actually reserves the right of retaliation, reserves the right of nuclear retaliation in non-nuclear attacks, and our bombs still give our generals a 10 on the atomic war boner scale.

But just so you're aware of the new panic: we're all going to die as Obama invites a nuclear strike and then fails to retaliate. Maybe he'll even launch our nukes at us, who knows? What's clear is that we have effectively surrendered to Russia. So practice huddling under your desk for protection and come up with a cool pose for when your shadow gets permanently etched onto some wall, because the liberals have killed us for certain this time. All on account of renewing a treaty and releasing a Congressionally mandated review. Who saw that coming?

Video of the day

Rachel Maddow on fake outrage and out an out lying by conservative media misinformation, most recently personified in Climategate and the ACORN/Pimp scandal, the latter of which is taken down further by her here.

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It kind of makes you wish Rachel was allowed to drop a full on "bullshit" during the piece. You know she wanted to. Yeah, she does pretty much have the best news commentary show on TV. But it could use some swearing.

(via Bad Astronomy)

An American show for Americans (i.e.: not you)

Sarah Palin's new FOX News show debuted over the weekend, but I'm sure I didn't have to tell you that. What was billed as a show where Alaska's former half-term governor would explore the stories and people that make America great, turned out just to be a Palin intro'd clearing house for hoary old special interest stories that had been gathering dust in the FOX vaults for years. Hey, anything for Sarah to make a couple million and for FOX to properly ingratiate itself and gain access to the next President/God-Queen.

The show was meant however, to “reaffirm our pioneering spirit and unmatched generosity, here and around the world” or some such bullshit. Just not the pioneering spirit of the liberal dipshits populating the portions of the country we call "where most of the people live".

“It’s not the kind of thing that’s going to excite you guys on the East Coast, but everyone else is dying to hear stories like these,” said one of her representatives who was not authorized to speak on the record but was authorized to slam the East Coast.

Turns out maybe she shouldn't have dismissed an entire sector of the country, particularly one where hundreds of millions of people live. She could have used the viewers, as her show debuted to middling/disappointing ratings.

Shame about that. I just want to congratulate Sarah for her new show and for how a show purporting to show "real American values" seems to cake itself in the value Sarah and her ilk seem to cherish most: telling the coasts and the vast majority of the country that they aren't real people living in real areas of the country and don't hold real American values.

And isn't that the most important American value? I'm asking that hypothetically. If you're reading this site you're probably on a coast and thus wouldn't know what a real American value is if it winked at you and wanted you to vote for it in two years. You're going to have to ask someone from Boise if you're really interested in knowing. But you probably aren't going to, which is why you're un-American. See, Sarah was right.

How things are going to be

Like most regular Freedomericans I too wonder what my future is under the yoke of Obamacare, plowing the fields of socialism. What will this bill mean for me, the most important of all Americans: the lowly read dick joke blogger. Some would say I look at this Washington Post health care calculator to have it specifically tell me what it means for me. Others would offer up Speaker Pelosi's page where the bill, summaries of the bill, bullet points of the bill and all sorts of other information about the bill is listed. Maybe some would say I should look at Ezra Klein's series on explaining the health care reform, or the Kaiser Family Foundation's health reform page, maybe you could look through the health care section of the Wonk Room, take a gander around the Center For American Progress, or maybe you should just avail myself of Google... provided you're outside China.

Those people would be wrong. The people I need to listen to are right wing media pundits. They're going to tell me exactly what it's going to be like now that this reform has become law.

Beck added: "You must -- must get on the phone in your districts. You must wake everybody up you know. This is the end of prosperity in America forever if this bill passes. This is the end of America as you know it."

Beck "warn[ed]" that if the bill "passes, the country is in real dire trouble." He went on to say: "The pieces that the president needs to control every aspect of your life, to fundamentally transform America, will be finished. He'll have them all,"

Limbaugh stated: "It is a government takeover of health care and granny is gonna die. Granny always dies at some point -- we all do. It's gonna be hastened under this bill."

Fox News contributor Dick Morris said what Obama "has in mind is curbing medical care to the elderly," and that he's "going to set up a panel" to determine treatment. Morris said he's "100 percent positive" this will happen.

Fox Business: "Does Obamacare mean millions more jobs destroyed?"

Cramer: "Obamacare will topple the stock market."

Limbaugh: Democrats will regulate "every aspect of our lives."

Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas said on Fox News: "The president says they're not going to pull the plug on granny. No, but they will deny her care because she's costing too much and she's too old."

Radio host Jim Quinn said that "Bolshevik Barbie and our marginally documented president" want "the power to control your body and your life. Quinn added: "Giving the government that power is allowing the government to commit a violent assault on your body -- a violent assault on your most precious possession, which is your life."

Quinn predicted that "if they pass this thing, you are going to see insurrection. You're going to see an uprising. People are just not going to take this.This is about establishing from now on and forever a socialist state in America, ripping the Constitution to shreds which progressives have hated for over 100 years.

Quinn: "If they pass health care ... that is the end of the republic."

Cal Thomas claimed health reform "is an outrage" and "a sham"; "[e]uthanasia is coming."

Limbaugh: "Human beings will die earlier than normal" under "freedom killing" and "life threatening" health-care reform.

Limbaugh said the "whole bill is about death" and "rationing." He continued: "It is the single greatest tool the government will have to regulate every aspect of behavior. This is a freedom killing, and it is going to end up being a life-threatening bill."

Chris Baker suggested that health reform will lead to overweight people going to jail or being put to death

Limbaugh: "Obamacare" will "smother the individual," "aimed at robbing you of your humanity," "all of us will be slaves."

Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.

I don't think I'm going to like this health reform thing at all. Christ, those last three guys were doctors. I don't want my protons reversing or my molecules exploding at the speed of light. THAT'S NOT THE CHANGE I SIGNED UP FOR BARRY!

Oh God, there's no hope. It's really the complete collapse of everything and everything, with slavery, human sacrifice, euthanasia, death panels, and some sort of temporal displacement where George Washington is erased from history. If only we knew beforehand. What have we wrought?

The end times

We here at TB Industries are avid Armageddon watchers. We like to look at any situation and extrapolate how it might end society and civilization as we know it. Be it giant space meteors, global warming, complete economic collapse, hadron/hardon colliders opening black holes on the French border, nuclear devastation, plagues, angry God/Gods on smiting sprees, or our dream... zombies, we are eager to see the world end. Mostly because we feel we'll survive and come to rule the wasteland that comes after. We're optimists.

But we also like to sarcastically joke about the Republican party and their dire predictions for things that will happen if Democratic legislation passes. Things like the systematic murder of the elderly because of health care. I guess when Barry puts pen to paper later today on that health care bill, he'll just be heralding some new round of horrible plagues. Maybe even the end times. No, seriously.



Yes, actual Armageddon.... because people will get better access to cheaper health care. I think you can all see the nightmare scenario that will bring about. But God bless the incredulous Shep Smith, who must be building up to another outburst any day now, for pushing through and getting Steele to claim that they want to get to a more civil place in politics... right after he declared the end of the world because of the health care bill and right before he plugged a site where you can go view a flame engulfed Nancy Pelosi and donate $16,000 to throw the bitch out of the Speaker's seat.

So on a scale of Armageddon we're going to have to rate health care as a weak 1, despite Steele's claims that it's a definite 10. There is a chance that the health care is so good that it will create functional immortals and overpopulation will occur, but that's a long shot. Plus immortality is the complete opposite of zombification, which is a major negative of the horror scale for an apocalyptic event. Steele thinks we're all going to die, we just wish we could believe him.

Stay classy, Hannity

We always like to mock Sean Hannity here at TB, and why not? The man is probably the most baldfaced liar on TV and he doesn't even have the nerve to be an interesting kind of crazy like Glenn Beck. I mean all he does is work himself into outraged conniptions about minor events he exaggerated and stories he invented in a annoyed windbaggy tone. No weeping, no stunts, no chalkboard. Boring evil.

And it's worked out pretty well for Hannity, as he's knocked down a $100 million dollar contract just for his radio show alone. But that's not enough money for him apparently, and has taken to using a charity he ostensibly started to help wounded soldiers and children of wounded soldiers and decided it should effectively be run as a PR machine and goodie bag dispensery for himself, his friends and his family. It's a shocker, I mean he just looks so trustworthy.

For the last several years, Sean Hannity and the Freedom Alliance “charity” have conducted “Freedom Concerts” across America. They’ve told you that they are raising money to pay for the college tuition of the children of fallen soldiers and to pay severely wounded war vets.
...
But it’s all a huge scam.

In fact, less than 20%–and in two recent years, less than 7% and 4%, respectively–of the money raised by Freedom Alliance went to these causes, while millions of dollars went to expenses, including consultants and apparently to ferret the Hannity posse of family and friends in high style. And, despite Hannity’s statements to the contrary on his nationally syndicated radio show, few of the children of fallen soldiers got more than $1,000-$2,000, with apparently none getting more than $6,000, while Freedom Alliance appears to have spent tens of thousands of dollars for private planes. Moreover, despite written assurances to donors that all money raised would go directly to scholarships for kids of the fallen heroes and not to expenses, has begun charging expenses of nearly $500,000 to give out just over $800,000 in scholarships.

And who revealed all of this? Conservative commentator Debbie Schlussel. Et tu Brute? Media Matters, not one to give Schlussel credit, even goes so far as to say that her numbers check out and points to further work done on the Charity Navigator page. There, on the website that rates and analyzes charities to see if they're scamming people and how much of the money they get is actually spent on their supposed cause, alleges that Hannity's charity might even spend less on wounded veterans than Schlussel does. Noting that by Freedom Alliance's own tax filings they have taken in almost $50 million since 2003 and doled out only &1.8 million to the families of veterans.

I guess this is why Hannity is always railing against the government for misuse of revenue: he sees that kind of abuse first hand all the time and must have a sixth sense for when it's happening.

Well this is all just so surprising. I mean, for one, who thought Sean Hannity would be so thoroughly dishonest is his dealings? Secondly who thought that a charity he started in an attempt to get publicity for himself and puff his chest out about how he cares more about the troops than liberals, wouldn't actually be committed to the spirit of charity? On the other had he did get a lot of free promotion and content for his radio and TV shows and he did get to meet Trace Adkins and Toby Kieth a bunch of times, so defrauding the American public and wounded soldiers worked out like gangbusters. Stay classy, Sean, I know you will. Can't wait to hear about how this is all a giant liberal conspiracy against you.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 03.04

Fox News Can’t Upset Murdoch’s Saudi Prince
We all know the basic rules Fox news operates under. 1.) Warp the meanings of fairness and balance to such a degree that it would cause George Orwell to hork on his Froot Loops. 2.) Hire any raving street corner maniac and give him an afternoon or evening opinion show, provided he of course decries liberals and praises Reagan in between fights with imaginary dragons and cardboard box defecations. 3.) Don't upset the Saudi Prince that bankrolls large sections of the Fox media empire with nasty mentions of the Saudi roll in funding terrorist actions worldwide. Actually that third one is a bit of a surprise. Who knew that such a jingoistic "fear the browns" network would find itself so beholden to Saudi sheiks. This seems like something that should have already fueled 12 ill though out chalkboard scribbling segments with a weeping Glenn Beck. Until then, you'll just have to make due with Joe Trento's take.

Our world may be a giant hologram
Did that headline just blow your mind? If it didn't, go get high and then re-read it. The entirety of existence might just be a 3-D hologram projection of a 2-D universe.... which may or may not be foil stamped onto the back of an even larger universal baseball card. Yes, that's exactly as weird as it sounds. And it's coming from the director of director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics based on the theories of Stephen Hawking. You know, crackpots. If all of this sounds surprising to you, you need to read more Warren Ellis comics. Every other page mentions "3-D hologram of a 2-D universe" this or "Zero-point energy" that. You could be ahead of the scientific curve if you just read more superhero picture books.

NHS money 'wasted' on homeopathy
In a victory for science and common sense, the UK decided that paying out money to homeopathic doctors and hospitals on the groundbreaking belief that handing out millions to people who sold magic water as a "cure" was a ludicrous idea. I'd like to take this as a sign that the world is becoming smarter, but we're over here paying out millions to abstinence only education, have state legislature passing measure to decry climate science, and we can't even seem to get a functioning health care system. Still, baby steps.

Ultra-Precise Quantum-Logic Clock Trumps Old Atomic Clock
Now that we have evidence that the mole people are causing earthquakes in order to steal seconds off our clock and throw the earth off its axis (SCIENCE FACT!!!!!!), we are in need of two things. 1.) A bloody, violent, merciless and ceaseless war against the underverse. 2.) More accurate clocks. Since we all know that atomic clocks are prone to creating irradiated scientists and are unreliable if you need time calculated down to the exact second every 3.7 billion year period, scientists have luckily devised a quantum logic clock that monitors the energy state of an aluminum ion. Sadly this has not become the global time standard yet, so as such if one of us is to become a near ageless Godlike being, our watches are going to be off by a second or two every couple of billion years. Such is life.

What Is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory
Physicist Sean Carroll is attempting to once and for all finally answer what time is. Easy, it's that stuff that watches emit and is then eaten by our jobs, friends, and family so that you are not allowed to enjoy it. Or, if you want to be a science dick about it, there's probably some sort of equation that explains it with more physics and less bitterness. Whatever. In an interview with Wired, Carroll tries to explain what he's trying to do and just what time is from a physics standpoint.

Video of the day

Bill Nye the Science Guy slowly bludgeons Joe Bastardi to death with facts, common sense, and science on the subject of global warming. Some might call Bill the winner of this debate because he calmly and rationally debated the facts while an agitated midget kept trying to talk over him. Other wags might declare Nye the loser because he even deigned to debate the subjects of truth and science with a braying jackass on the show of another, larger braying jackass on Fox News.

But no, we're the loser because we treat this shit like there's an actual debate and getting Bill Nye on TV to offer a counterpoint to nonsense is actually a massive leap forward for the standard of debate within our newsmedia. Do you think this goes on in Sweden or the UK? No, America is the loser.

Oh, the humanity

The other day Anthem, a subsidiary of health care evil corporation Wellpoint, announced that they were going to jack their rates 39%. Why? Well they only made $2.7 billion last quarter and are part of a group of health care giants that collectively only grossed a record $12.2 billion in profits last year while dropping coverage for 2.7 million Americans. Wellpoint's profit margin is only 7.3%. They're hurting.

Well this little bit of money grubbing hubris was too much for even Fox News, who looked at this state of events and harshly scolded Wellpoint and Anthem... for poor timing and possibly helping Democrats make the case that reform is urgently needed. Priorities, people.

PAYNE: But Brad this is like Jaws 2, just when you thought it was safe to get out of the healthcare debate, you brought everybody back into it. [...] Didn’t someone though, wasn’t there a committee that said listen, let’s take Wall Street’s lead, do the minimum we can, wait for this to blow over and maybe a year from now try to hike rates?

VARNEY: You handed the politicians red meat at a time when healthcare is being discussed. You gave it to them!

That's populism I can believe in. How dare an insurance company so openly show exactly what they're about and prove a point about the urgent need for reform. Don't they know what's at stake here? The health and coverage of people? Pssht. Whatever. This might embolden hippies and those who are sympathetic to their hippie goals! We were almost past this! Democrats had almost completely given up! Now a few of them might groggily scratch their heads, stumble to their feet and mutter "...oh yeah, now I remember". Don't you see what you've done while nobly trying to attain your goal of siphoning gobs of money off of people while giving them zero coverage? Think!

Thankfully they've heard the call, realized just how many liberals this might embolden, how they were taking steps to make sure "health insurance giant" replaced "Nazis" as the de facto movie villain, and have thankfully decided to scuttle the proposed rate hike... for a couple months. It seems that massively unpopular decisions effect a bottom line more than rate increases do.

So: bullet momentarily dodged. Jsut be a little more careful the next time you try to jacks rates. Take Fox News' concerns about emboldening Democrats to heart. I mean, after all, they're only looking out for you. Maybe next time, try a little better name marketing. Instead of an "egregious cash grab" try for a more friendly sounding "temporary rate cut adjustment". It'll do wonders for your PR.

Blah blah blah Al Gore

Last night, before going to bed, I declared the supposed second snowpocalypse storm, which at that point had only dumped a piddling amount of snow on the ground and devolved into a weak drizzle of rain, to be a weak ass bitch ass storm for week-kneed little sisters that wasted my time with dreams of a new ice age. So imagine my surprise when during my slumber (and dreams of money and zombies) the sneaky bastard shat down a couple of more inches during the night, re-crippling a mid-Atlantic that has apparently never dealt with snow before.

Of course we all know what this torrent of winter weather means: global warming is a hoax, Al Gore is fat, and climate change is a myth. And as if on cue, our betters in the right wing media (like always) along with a couple of our more extra ignorant elected representatives, and dimwitted newspapers have chimed in right on cue with those sentiments. Hey, Al Gore is really fat.

But because we love you and we get a tasty percentage cut from Gore for any reader we're able to trick into buying into the global conspiracy and scientific con game that is climate change, here's an actual expert from Climate Progress opining on how "It's cold here right now, thus science is wrong" isn't as scientific as it sounds.

It's long and sciencey, but it basically comes down to a few simple points: climate isn't weather you dimwitted oafs, these major snow events are simultaneously happeneing during some of the warmest winters on record, how there have been two "100 year storms" in two months and how that isn't good, how Al Gore is merely big-boned, and how climate change driven record moisture levels are responsible for these storms and future storms.

Here's MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan making the case. Ratigan is notable for being the only guy on TV who wants to use the snow storm to discuss science. Liberal hippie freak.



Not as convincing as Dr. Hannity, Climate Scientist, but it'll have to do. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go collect a check from Science. I can assure you it has nothing to do with helping to perpetrate a large scale hoax on the populace.

Video of the day

Paul Krugman during a This Week round-table, telling FOX News head Roger Ailes just what he thinks of his network. I think he's gunning for this year's Nobel Prize in Gettin' Up in Yo Face, Bitch!

What are the odds?

Lou Dobbs to appear on The O’Reilly Factor next Monday

I guess this is the "constructive problem-solving" and the "working to change the crippling partisanship and ideology that define the public arena" that he talked about yesterday.

They are going to have such unwatchable sex.