Couple quick ones to start off with…the Don’t Make Us Pay stuff is getting more exposure.  Here they go with “dazzling hypocrisy” and include some samples of the banner ads.   Over here they just call it “dishonesty“.   Both of those are moving up the search results lists, and this should help.

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Speaking of the Fed and Big Banks, the Fed recently rejected a couple plans for dividend pay-outs.   The third comment (or so) there nails the reason why.. B of A still has a bunch of stuff on their books that nobody knows the value of, and the Fed is taking the safe route (having finally been burned massively by taking banks’ word for it).

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A couple beautiful things before we get to the politics…a nice real-time view of huge charged-particle releases in the upper atmosphere and a slightly accelerated version of the stuff from last week [news story about the process].

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Next we have the curiously accurate English sentence of ‘Newt deletes tweets‘.   I guess when you get hammered for such obvious hypocrisy, you have to do some serious white-washing before blatant hypocrisy becomes endemic to your campaign.   To be sure, this is the guy who used his overwhelming love of country as a rationalization for infidelity (yea, for reals), so I don’t doubt his wriggliness and this latest huge, obvious, contemporary, topical flip-flop won’t deter his most fervent supporters (if any ever materialize).

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Steve Inskeep points out how NPR has an obvious liberal bias, citing their propensity to put themselves in harm’s way in order to accurately report on world events (I guess the alternative or “conservative” news gathering method is to sit in a studio and opine on the news gathered by others, while simultaneously slamming them for bias.)

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Keep slamming hispanics, Republicans.  It’s political genius, I tells ya.

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Keep slamming science, Republicans.  REALLY SLAM THAT SHIT!!! It’s political genius, I tells ya.

Here is how stupid the guy who put this bill together is.  Yes, saying that might very well be soon against the law in Texas (it’s called “small government” or as it used to be known “Big Brother”).

Mother Jones: Are you a creationist?

Rep. Bill Zedler of Arlington [who authored the bill]: Evolutionists will go “Oh, it just happened by chance.” Today we know that’s false  [Ed note:  Yes, we know your understanding of evolution is false.  “It happened by chance” is not in any way, shape, or form, equal to evolutionary theory.  This is why these idiots hate evolution, they have no idea what it actually is.].

Today we know that even a single-celled organism is hugely complex. When was the last time we’ve seen someone go into a windstorm or a tornado or any other kind of natural disaster, and say “Guess what? That windstorm just created a watch.” [Ed Note: The “watch” is a reference to one and only “thought experiment” associated with “proving” Intelligent Design.   It goes thusly; break a watch into a bunch of pieces (or take a bunch of watch pieces), put them in the clothes dryer (or something else to randomly shake them up), turn the dryer on and leave it for an arbitrary amount of time.  Did the watch randomly re-assemble?  No.  Therefore evolution is false.   And yes, that is *all* the experiments behind the movement.]

MJ: Are you saying a windstorm is like the Big Bang?

BZ: It has to do with things occurring by chance. [Ed note: The “windstorm” is the clothes dryer in his thought example.]

MJ: Ok. [Long pause]. Is a windstorm analogous to a genetic mutation?

BZ: Well, not really. I don’t want to go that far. [Ed note: He can’t go that far as this is now beyond his own understanding of what he just said.   The ID “thought experiment” is not even an accurate metaphor for any of the well understood functions of evolution.]  Let me put it to you this way: When we talk about people with faith, there is no greater faith than that life began by chance [Ed note: This is where creationists fail horribly.  Two reasons.  First is the total fail of thinking that evolution theory is the same thing as “chance”.  Second, folks like this think people who understand evolutionary theory do so only on faith, not on the mountains and mountains of data that support and, over the year, have expanded the theory], with the amount of knowledge that we know now.

MJ: I thought people doing work on the science of evolution typically don’t weigh in on what caused the beginning of life.

BZ: I wonder why? [Ed note:  Essentially because most of evolutionary theory deals with how existing life changes and adapts.  There is also a reluctance, in actual science, to draw big conclusions when one doesn’t have sufficient big data to support them.  Current frontrunners for where life came from originally, IMHO, include abiogenesis, and, along a similar vein, panspermia. These are, at most, small subsets of evolutionary theory, and ones where getting good data is hard as hell (but not impossible, we just have to scoop dust from comets to do it).

MJ: They say they don’t know the answer.

BZ: If somebody does decide to weigh in, why should they be discriminated against? [Ed note: Because if they “weigh in” on a big scientific question, with no data, no experiments, and no possibility of falsification, it ain’t science.]

MJ: Because they don’t have the scientific evidence to substantiate their views.

BZ: The debate ought to be: “How did it happen?” But we’re not gonna allow that one to be brought up! I don’t think they oughta be thrown off campus if they come up with it. [Ed note:  This is the really sad part, and where I’ll leave this…”the debate out to be”…is a political statement, not a scientific one.  This whole charade is about forcing religion*, through politics, into science.   This is just about the lowest of the low, as far as the intellectual honesty scales go.

* For those that are yet unaware, “Intelligent Design” is a re-branding of creationism, with the added bells and dog-whistle “watch” thought experiment I mentioned previously. Read this judge’s opinion for the full examination of this association.]

[you can read the rest here]

[here’s the text of the bill PDF]

BTW, and as a final note on this….the last sentence of the bill includes this phrase…”or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.”

This, as all pastafarians know, is a direct reference to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.   FSM was originally conceived (revealed) to be the actual creator a few years ago when it became clear that the physical evidence that FSM created everything was equal to the physical evidence that any other being/entity create everything.

If this bill passes….I’m pretty sure it’s going to be time to start teaching this FSM theory to everyone, and suing every private school that discriminate against me for trying to teach it by not hiring me to teach it.