Tons of political stuff happening.  Wish I had time to explore it all in detail.  Sadly, not all of us can inherit a few hundred million dollars like the Kochs and just sit around all day talkin’ smack about poor people (and paying self-avowed Christians to do the same thing).   Actually, I guess that’s probably a good thing.  Two of those assholes are enough.

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First up is a judge telling the military it can’t ask or tell gays to go home.  This put the Obama Administration in a weird place.  They like the result, just not the means (and by “they” I mean the CinC, the DoD, and the JCoS…all the main players are ready to end this rule).  The hope was to repeal this law through legislation.  That plan was, of course, sidelined by a Republican filibuster.   So now we get a bit of chaos as the ruling goes out.

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The boogeyman of the right is sitting out this election cycle.

Mr. Soros, a champion of liberal causes, has been directing his money to groups that work on health care and the environment, rather than electoral politics. Asked if the prospect of Republican control of one or both houses of Congress concerned him, he said: “It does, because I think they are pushing the wrong policies, but I’m not in a position to stop it. I don’t believe in standing in the way of an avalanche.”

This gives the “huge amounts of foreign money spent on election” edge to the Right.  Not to mention that now (thanks SCOTUS!) where this moeny comes from can be legally kept a secret.  All of which adds up to a couple links we’ll see later…

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He is more machine now than man. Twisted and evil.

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Graphene is pretty dang cool. (and they won a Nobel for it.)

Yesterday, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov split the Nobel in Physics for their work on a carbon compound called graphene. Graphene may not mean much to the man on the street now, but experts believe that its amazing mechanical and electrical properties will prove as transformative to coming generations as the television, atomic bomb and silicon chip did in the decades after the Nobel committee first honored the scientists who made those inventions possible.

Graphene is a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms arrayed in a honeycomb pattern. It is the strongest material ever discovered, yet flexible like rubber. It conducts electricity better than silicon, and resists heat better than diamond. And it allows for physics experiments that would otherwise require miles-long particle accelerators to be performed on a desktop.

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One of the few bright shining lights of small-government-freedom, pragmatism and progress I’ve seen this election cycle…

On June 2, 2005, more than 500 economists, including three Nobel prize winners, issued an open letter that called attention to a report on the economic benefits of treating marijuana like alcohol and tobacco – billions and billions in budgetary savings and gains in new tax revenue.

The report, by Harvard’s Jeffrey Miron, an expert on the budgetary implications of enforcing the prohibition of illicit drugs, provided fodder for a long-running debate on the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana but did little to impress the people to which it was addressed – President George W. Bush, Congress, governors and state legislatures. One reason: the economy was humming along nicely in the first half of 2005.

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Lou Dobbs turns out to be a huge hypocrite, who would have guessed?  Multi-millionaires with glass houses and stables shouldn’t be throwing stones at the people cleaning them.

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Glad to see this finally happening.  It’s taken waaay too long.

 (Reuters) – Doctors have begun testing human embryonic stem cells on a patient for the first time, Geron Corp. said on Monday.Geron has the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration license to use the controversial cells to treat people, in this case patients with new spinal cord injuries.

I love the Family Guy bit where Peter has a stroke and then gets the 5-minutes stem-cell treatment.   While a bit on the fanciful side, injecting a broken spine with stem cells, getting knocked out while they do their work, and waking up being able to walk is a potential reality I think a number of people would appreciate.   And if we run out of cells, I’d gladly donate a few million sperm to make more.

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Follow-up to earlier link about foreign money being dropped all over the place by the Chamber of Commerce.  Another link points out what a bunch of hypocritical douchebags they are.

WASHINGTON – During the worst of the economic crisis, the nation’s most powerful business lobby pleaded with Congress to prop up financial institutions and stimulate the economy with hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money.

“Make no mistake: When the aftermath of congressional inaction becomes clear, Americans will not tolerate those who stood by and let the calamity happen,” wrote Bruce Josten, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s vice president in September 2008, who at the time pressed lawmakers before their vote on a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street.

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Fast forward to the present. The chamber is now spending millions of dollars on ads trying to elect candidates whose campaigns are based on opposing the very bank rescue and stimulus law it once supported.

Fox is, of course, rampantly defending the Chamber of Commerce. 

They are, of course, keeping with their concept of journalistic “ethics” by not mentioning in that article about their own large, foreign, donation to the same Chamber. (the second largest shareholder in News Corp after the Aussie Murdoch is a Suadi)

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And finally, a bit of the lulz.  I’d like to personally thank the Tea Party for bringing so many lols to the election cycle.  Here’s some of the latest…

“When we were fighting the Soviets over there in Afghanistan in the 80s and 90s, we did not finish the job, so now we have a responsibility to finish the job and if you are gonna make these politically correct statements that it’s costing us too much money, you are threatening the security of our homeland.”  – Christine O’Donnel (who is not a witch, nor likely a virgin).

And then there’s this….*le sigh*…

GRAND JUNCTION, Colorado (AFP) – A billboard depicting Barack Obama as an Islamist suicide bomber, a gay and a Mexican bandit has triggered a storm of criticism in a western US city weeks ahead of crucial polls.

The colourful poster of the US president — under the ironic slogan “Vote DemocRAT” — is attracting attention from media worldwide and from people clogging a local parking lot for a closer look.

It also depicts him as a gangster…and, of couse, those responsible are so proud of their work they refuse to say who is funding it (sensing a pattern yet?)

Peace out…that was too much.