February 18, 2010 archive

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning


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Open Thread

GOP House Rep thinks Bush might have caused 9/11

Crossposted at Daily Kos

   If Republicans and Fox News pundits were embarrassed about looking like birthers, loony bins and white supremacists, well, they just got a whole lot more to worry about.


    Recently, a truther organization called “We Are The Change” spoke to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) – a friend of (Glenn) Beck and a frequent guest on his show – about reopening an investigation into 9/11. Chaffetz agreed with the activist, and even noted that he had spoken to professor Steven Jones, leading 9/11 truther, who Chaffetz said had done “interesting work”

thinkprogress.org

     Houston, we have a WTF.

A transcript and more below the fold.

Winter Photos from the Bronx Zoo.

I’m so burnt out of anything political to say but I still take plenty of pictures. I tried to restart Friday Evening Photoblogging a few weeks back at DailyKos and this is a repost. I’m going to post last week’s here tomorrow because it relates to this weeks and continue the series here on Friday night. I hope you enjoy these pictures.

Have you ever gone to a zoo in midwinter? This diary is a selection of of photos from a three hour trip to the Zoo on a sunny winter day.

I could tell you a winter’s tale or two about going to the zoo. I think it is the best time for both interaction with animals and photographic opportunities.

This is not my first Bronx Zoo diary. My point about a winter visit can be made by comparing the photos in that collection from  about twenty visits to the zoo and these from a three hour tour.

Hill: Reid Lacks Jobs Bill Cloture Vote

Yesterday, I reported on the incredulous national reaction fellow Democrats had to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D, CA) proposed amendment to the upcoming Jobs Bill, the one where she wanted to suspend the Endangered Species Act protections to migrating baby salmon and Delta smelt in the Sacramento & San Joaquin River Delta, with the excuse that increased water pumping out of the Delta to her billionaire water broker donors would “increase jobs.”

This ignored the fact that the salmon fishing season has been suspended the past 2 years on the CA coast and may be heading for a 3rd year of cancelation because of the collapse and crash of the salmon population.

Story here:

DiFi Does a Pombo on Salmon, Jobs Bill Amend Guts EndSpecAct

I found a letter from CA Assemblyperson, Chair of the “Water, Parks, & Wildlife Committee,” Jared Huffman, to Mark Corwin, Director of the CA Dept of Water Resources (DWR) from 1 week ago, Feb 10th.  In it, Chairman Huffman asks why the CA Dept of Water Resources (DWR)  is flouting the CA Endangered Species Act (CESA) with regards to Judge Oliver Wanger’s opinion Feb 5, 2010, that Delta water pumping extraction must decrease to protect Delta Smelt and migrating salmon.  In 2008 and 2009, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service said that if water agencies such as CVP + SWP pumped high amounts of water out of the Delta at certain times, it was going to drive Federally listed endangered fish in the Delta to extinction. (state rules need to comply with Federal listings)  In the summer of 2009 the Dept of Water Resources requested rules clarification, then turned around and started attacking the new rules in court.  

 

Huffman  to DWR:

{{{   On August 3, 2009, (the CA)  Dept Water Resources (DWR) filed legal papers in support of a motion

by its water contractors seeking to invalidate the biological opinion – even though the effect would

be to invalidate DWR’s own CA Endangered Species Act coverage for the SWP pumps.

Then DWR took aim at the salmon biological opinion.  Last week, detection of salmon triggered an

obligation under the salmon biological opinion for the SWP/CVP pumps to reduce reverse flows in Middle

and Old Rivers.  State and federal water contractors went to court seeking to overturn the heavily peer

reviewed salmon biological opinion and replace it with a previously invalidated Bush-era opinion.  

Now, detection of smelt has triggered protections under the delta smelt biological opinion. As you know, a limitation on reverse flow to protect delta smelt would also meet your requirements to protect salmon and longfin smelt.  Monday, Central Valley Project contractors filed for a Temporary Restraining Order on the delta smelt protections.  And Dept of Water Resources, fully informed as to the deference the court gave its last letter, filed another “non-opposition” letter yesterday.

Having actively worked to create these problems, please explain how DWR intends to fix them.  }}}

 

______________

a pdf download of Huffman’s letter to the DWR is here:  

http://www.lloydgcarter.com/fi…

I expanded some of the acronyms above, so it would read more easily

I’m quoting this to to help illustrate the breadth of the problem Senator Feinstein created with so many levels of both state and Federal water and fisheries law, when she decided to play Top Water Distributress of the SacJoaquin Delta. The state of CA was trying to work this out with the Federal government, and she meddled to make a favor to Kerns County water brokers, and Westlake Mutual Water Company and billionaire donor Stewart Resnik, so they could sell a bigger water allotment to the highest bidder in Southern CA.  And this is going to be tacked on to a JOBS Bill.

Congress has had this week off because of President’s day. They had the previous week off because of 2 massive snowstorms.  So they’ve had plenty of time to interact people who are either mad at them or wish to purchase their influence.

Today, The Hill is reporting that Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid doesn’t have the cloture votes to even begin debate on the jobs bill.  

Overnight Caption Contest

“Throw The Bums Out” Actionable Idea

First off, me likey teh hostility….again:

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Join the American Pirate Party!

http://www.americanpirateparty…

Any and all with third-party experience are Welcome to join either through us or at the national level, but the group sex between me and the Working Families Party is gonna be sexy.  Like CRAZY sexy most likely.

Right now our Bank Accounts disqualify us from running on our issues.

Check out our platform, join us please, or Working Families if you must, but either way we need numbers for the cluster-fuck of political nutshots we wanna distribute to the useless fucktards in both parties occupying OUR government:

Photobucket

What zombie banksters learned from destroying capitalism.

First, they learned that financial markets are hyper-sensitive to steroids, lack of law enforcement, and time-tested shock doctrine principles, and that they can profit mightily from destroying capitalism.


Insert a shitload of obscene charts about here.

Second, they learned that they “own the place,” “the place” meaning “the potemkin government,” “no longer applicable laws,” “the future wealth of all dispossessed generations of slaves, thralls, and hostages;” and “owning” meaning “complete mastery of all worldly possessions unto the end of the earth and beyond.”  Third, they learned that no lies are too big to tell.  Fourth, they now keenly understand that the religion of financial growth is the most powerful Kool-Aid invented, and now it’s just a matter of getting everyone on the plane to Jonestown.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

So it appears that CPAC is trying to ramp up enthusiasm with video games (warning, Faux Noise link).

Let me tell you how that works out.

Back in the day I was running my brewing buddy for capo di tutti (which by the way he never got and I did) he used to host these legendary Halloween Parties.  I remember the first one.

In addition to the usual party things you do, between us we have an unusual collection of classic video games including dedicated Pongs, Ataris, Colecos, Segas, Commodore 64s, Apples, and others of more ancient vintage that we set up as stations among which people could circulate.

AND we had a new video projector on which we planned to show Music Videos that people could dance to, but with which we debuted the most mesmerising 10 minutes in movies- the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

12 hours of couch drooling passivity later we vowed to never again include the Hypnotoad in our plans for world domination through pastel colored boxes.

The Hypnotoad.

"Television is a vast wasteland"
hypnotoad

NASA confirms accelerated Glacial Melting BELOW the Surface.

Most of us know that Most Glaciers ARE Melting. Here are some stats:

A Reply to the Attacks on Climate Change Science

The science is sound and the glaciers are shrinking, says the Union of Concerned Scientists.

02/10/2010

A 2005 global survey of 442 glaciers from the World Glacier Monitoring Service found that only 26 were advancing, 18 were stationary, and 398 were retreating. Overall, about 90 percent of the world’s glaciers that scientists have measured are shrinking as the planet warms.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/…

And here’s what a shrinking glacier looks like using time-lapse photography, to speed up the action …



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Pony Party: Bell, Book & Murder

Bell, Book, and Murder is an omnibus edition of three mysteries by Rosemary Edghill (the nom de plume of Eluki Bes Shahar), all with the same narrator: Bast, the goddess-name of Karen Hightower, a witch in NYC who works for a book paste-up operation just off Houston Street.

I’ve been rereading it today, and while nobody would call it “literature” in the same category as Joyce’s Ulysses, the novels are very well-written and a lot of fun to read.

More below the fold; but: what do you read for fun?  Please answer in the comments.  And if I disappear, it’s b/c I’ve been having major computer problems lately.

Updated: The Return of Confederate Dollars in South Carolina

Crossposted at Daily Kos

Talk about love of retro money.

The Palmetto Scoop in South Carolina has this bizarre report

South Carolina will no longer recognize U.S. currency as legal tender, if State Rep. Mike Pitts has his way.

Pitts, a fourth-term Republican from Laurens, introduced legislation earlier this month that would ban what he calls “the unconstitutional substitution of Federal Reserve Notes for silver and gold coin” in South Carolina.

If the bill were to become law, South Carolina would no longer accept or use anything other than silver and gold coins as a form of payment for any debt, meaning paper money would be out in the Palmetto State.

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