By the way, Blogger has been melting down all weekend

Across the entire system, thus the hard time you might have had (still have) accessing the site. Read More......

Saturday Night (Live) Open Thread

Anyone else watching Saturday Night Live? Steve Martin is hosting.

Open thread away! Read More......

Great moments in mainstream journalism

From MSNBC:

The suspect in the hatchet-and-gun attack in a Massachusetts gay bar is in custody following a shootout that left an Arkansas police officer and a woman dead on Saturday, police said.

Jacob Robida, 18, was wanted in Thursday's attack at Puzzles Lounge in New Bedford, Mass., that left three men wounded, one critically.

Robida sometimes glorified Nazism and had a swastika tattoo but never previously expressed any prejudice toward gays, friends say.

Yes, who could have seen it coming? Read More......

24 year old Bush political appointee tells NASA to push "intelligent design by a creator" - and by the way, we're all dead

A week after the Bush administration told NASA global warming experts to stop talking about global warming, we now know have 24 year olds just out college telling senior scientists to water their lectures about Einstein. Literally. That's what the kid did. The scientists were going to be talking about Einstein and the big bang, and the Bush appointee got upset because the big bang might conflict with people's religions.

So NASA is now a church.

And we wonder why space shuttles blow up. Screw the repair job. Just slap some tape on that baby, put her on the launch pad, and let's all just pray why she takes off. After all, an intelligent designer would only blow up the shuttle as part of his plan, so who are we to say otherwise?

And as for this global warming issue. Where are the environmental groups? How hard is it to mount a campaign on global warming when the glaciers in Alaska are melting so badly they've had to move the visitors center closer to the glacier because the glacier is disappearing?

Deborah Williams, the executive director of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, used to take visitors from the Lower 48 to the famous Portage Glacier just outside Anchorage, where the $8 million Begich-Boggs visitor center opened in 1986. By 1993, the Portage glacier had receded so much that it no longer could be seen from the visitors' center.

And by the way, read that entire article, it's horrifying.

Things are getting so bad that polar bears are, for the first time, literally drowning because there's no ice for them to take a break on while swimming.

SCIENTISTS have for the first time found evidence that polar bears are drowning because climate change is melting the Arctic ice shelf.

The researchers were startled to find bears having to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food. They are being forced into the long voyages because the ice floes from which they feed are melting, becoming smaller and drifting farther apart....

Polar bears live on ice all year round and use it as a platform from which to hunt food and rear their young. They hunt near the edge, where the ice is thinnest, catching seals when they make holes in the ice to breath. They typically eat one seal every four or five days and a single bear can consume 100lb of blubber at one sitting.

And now, things have gotten so bad, that scientists are debating whether in the next few decades we're approaching a "tipping point" beyond which there will be nothing we can do to fix the problem. That's when all hell breaks loose.

Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend....

There are three specific events that these scientists describe as especially worrisome and potentially imminent, although the time frames are a matter of dispute: widespread coral bleaching that could damage the world's fisheries within three decades; dramatic sea level rise by the end of the century that would take tens of thousands of years to reverse; and, within 200 years, a shutdown of the ocean current that moderates temperatures in northern Europe.

Kiss NY and Florida goodbye:

...one of the greatest dangers lies in the disintegration of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets, which together hold about 20 percent of the fresh water on the planet. If either of the two sheets disintegrates, sea level could rise nearly 20 feet in the course of a couple of centuries, swamping the southern third of Florida and Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village.

And remember that move, The Day After Tomorrow, where the Atlantic current collapses, simulations show there's a 50% of that happening within 200 years:

Many scientists are also worried about a possible collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, a current that brings warm surface water to northern Europe and returns cold, deep-ocean water south. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who directs Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has run multiple computer models to determine when climate change could disrupt this "conveyor belt," which, according to one study, is already slower than it was 30 years ago. According to these simulations, there is a 50 percent chance the current will collapse within 200 years.

Now back to the Bush administration trying to censor NASA scientists:

When Hansen posted data on the Internet in the fall suggesting that 2005 could be the warmest year on record, NASA officials ordered Hansen to withdraw the information because he had not had it screened by the administration in advance, according to a Goddard scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity. More recently, NASA officials tried to discourage a reporter from interviewing Hansen for this article and later insisted he could speak on the record only if an agency spokeswoman listened in on the conversation.

How's this for a factoid:

The 10 warmest years on record all have occurred since 1990, with 2005 the second hottest.

And finally, here's my favorite part of the Miami Herald story:

Now, two decades after his landmark paper, Broecker believes recent findings and more refined computer modeling have postponed The Day After Tomorrow indefinitely.

Only a major icing-over of the North Atlantic would bring about a radical cooling of the Northern Hemisphere. Ice would repel the sun's energy and create more icing. That would happen only if all the Greenland ice melted and injected enough freshwater to shut down the conveyor belt. No computer models see that happening in the foreseeable future.

Yeah, they only show it happening in 200 years, a 50% chance, in one study - so there is a study, Miami Herald. That's a 50% chance in 200 years of the move 'The Day After Tomorrow' becoming real, at least according to one study.

Now sure, the Bush administration can tell us that maybe the study is wrong. Maybe the Atlantic current won't stop, freezing most of North American and Europe dead in a new ice age.

But again, think about it. We're talking a study saying there's a 50% chance of us triggering a new ice age, and the Bush administration isn't concerned.

So I'll say it again. Where the hell are the environmental groups? Probably with all the other liberal advocacy groups. Off fund-raising. Read More......

Open thread

Rainy Read More......

Rummy is setting the stage for us to attack Iran

I still say, fine, let him. With what Army? All the soldiers we have in Iraq on the 2nd and 3rd tour? That should be interesting. What Bush is doing is setting the stage for a surgical strike against Iran's nuclear plants - hoping that Iran won't retaliate by invading Iraq. But then what do they think Iran will do? They'll have to do something to respond. Blow up a few embassies in Europe? Some suicide bombers in the US?

We are setting down the exact same course as we did for the invasion of Iraq. The goal was Osama and Al Qaeda, and now we're dealing with a country that supports terrorists and/or extremist and/or people we just don't like in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon. That's nice that we're concerned, but that's not exactly Osama and Al Qaeda, is it? Is there any evidence at all that Iran has sponsored terrorism against the US? If so, then we really don't need an excuse for invading.

I'm not saying that Iran is a nice place. But since when did we become the world's policeman, invading every country that isn't nice? I'm all for making war when it's worthy - going after Milosevic in order to save the Kosovars was absolutely the right thing to do. Invading Iraq in 1991, right again. But Iraq this time around was a mistake built on a lie, and now we're going to attack Iran and just cross our fingers and hope that this time things go better than they did in Iraq? Hope that if we install a "Democratic" government they won't elect some crazies like they did in the Palestinian territories, or still support the conservative religious bad guys like they're doing in Iraq?

Bush's foreign policy involves a lot of "God will provide" finger-crossing. And to date, God hasn't. Read More......

VIDEO: Brokeback to the Future

I wanted to be offended, but I couldn't stop laughing. Read More......

Ralph Reed's star is fading fast

This is actually a fun story for a Saturday morning. Ralph Reed, the GOP's boy wonder, is having a really hard time in the race for Lieutenant Governor....this is the race that was going to launch his political career. Instead, he's running in to the Jack Abramoff buzz saw. Reed, who used to run the Christian Coalition, is one of the more nefarious GOP operatives. The backlash couldn't happen to a better guy:

In recent months, it was reported that Reed's public relations and lobbying businesses received $4.2 million from his longtime friend Abramoff to mobilize Christian voters to fight the opening of casinos that would compete with Abramoff's Indian tribe clients.

Now, Reed's little-known rival for the Republican nomination, fellow conservative Casey Cagle, is outpacing him in fundraising, and a recent poll shows Cagle could be as strong a candidate as Reed against a Democrat.

Reed has not been charged with a crime. But analysts say the boyish-looking, 44-year-old darling of the conservative movement and former adviser to GOP presidential campaigns appears to be in political trouble because of his ties to Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in January to corruption charges and admitted swindling his Indian clients.

The Georgia GOPers are turning against Reed, who was the state party chair:

On Friday, 21 of Georgia's 34 Republican state senators - all Cagle supporters - signed a letter urging Reed to withdraw from the race, saying his involvement in the Abramoff scandal "threatens to impact the entire Republican ticket."

Now, don't put it past the GOP to still nominate Reed. That'll give us more time to kick him around -- and he deserves all he gets. Read More......

Seems like Scooter was an even bigger liar

You know you're in trouble when the Washington Post headline links you to lying, "More Allegations of Libby Lies Revealed":

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak case alleged that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff was engaged in a broader web of deception than was previously known and repeatedly lied to conceal that he had been a key source for reporters about undercover operative Valerie Plame, according to court records released yesterday.

The records also show that by August 2004, early in his investigation of the disclosure of Plame's identity, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald had concluded that he did not have much of a case against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby for illegally leaking classified information. Instead, Fitzgerald was focused on charging Cheney's top aide with perjury and making false statements, and knew he needed to question reporters to prove it.

No surprise here. Lying is standard operating procedure in the Bush White House. But they can get away with lying to the media and to the American people. Even lying to Congress hasn't hurt the Bush team. But, federal prosecutors take lying seriously. As does the FBI.

So, by lying, Scooter was doing business as usual. He just did it with some people who actually cared -- and had the authority to do something about it. Read More......

Saturday Morning Open Thread

I know it is early on a Saturday morning...but what are you hearing? Read More......

NY GOP Candidate alters news stories for better coverage

Former Republican Governor of Massachusetts William Weld, who is now running for Governor of New York as a Republican, has discovered a whole new way to spin the news. When his staff doesn't like the news coverage, they just change it:

As William F. Weld runs for governor of New York this year, his campaign has put a new spin on the old political rule of having a positive message.

Campaign aides have significantly altered two newspaper articles on his Web site about his bid for governor, removing all negative phrases about him, like "mini-slump" and "dogged by an investigation," and passages about his political problems.

Also removed were references to a federal investigation of Decker College, a Kentucky trade school that Mr. Weld led until he left to run for governor last fall; the college collapsed into bankruptcy weeks later amid allegations of financial aid fraud. And criticism of Mr. Weld by a former New York Republican senator, Alfonse D'Amato, was removed.

The Weld campaign placed the sanitized articles, still under the reporters' bylines, on its Web site, weldfornewyork.org , under the heading "news." Nothing told readers about the changes.

Truthfulness has never been an obstacle for the GOP -- and they despise the media...so in their warped minds, this new approach probably makes sense. You do have to wonder if this is a new party wide strategy -- I doubt it was an isolated incident. Read More......