When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools — in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes. He hasn’t changed.

This is what we're up against. Abolition of basic government services in pursuit of Big Business. At least no one can speak logically (I know, like that matters) about getting rid of the CIA with so much terrorism at our doorstep.

-janelane

Op-Ed Columnist - The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party - NYTimes.com

People who drink heavily live longer than those who completely abstain from alcohol, according to a new study conducted by a psychologist at the University of Texas.

Ha! A perfectly counterintuitive result.

-janelane

How does booze extend your lifespan? - By Brian Palmer - Slate Magazine

It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?

This article encapsulates everything that is so much more wrong about today than in decades past. Every new generation decries the current times as the worst, but we are at a point where Americans are dumbening by the hour. I may over-internalize the problem of the extreme right, but before you know it, over half of the Republican party will believe anything and everything Rush Limbaugh and Fox News tell them. I don't know about you, but what a bunch of hate-filled, misogynistic, racist, wholly uneducated, and poor-people-and-basic-government-services-be-damned people we will become if they rule the country.

I'm just glad that the Daily Show is still on otherwise I would have turned my back on television and any semblance of accuracy in reporting a long time ago.

-janelane, pessimistically

Building a Nation of Know-Nothings - NYTimes.com

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, in an address Wednesday to a special commission on Georgia tax reform, called on the state and Gov. Sonny Perdue to reduce the public workforce in order to redirect money toward education.

Whoa. What a novel idea; don't cut taxes unless you can make up the shortfall, and eliminate the bloated state workforce to provide for an educated future work force.

-janelane

Atlanta's Mayor Reed suggests cutting state workforce �| ajc.com

You know my pants sag low (low)
Even though (though) that went out of style
Like ten years ago (go)

Ha! Two points for internet radio.

-janelane

Spose -- "I'm Awesome"

On August 4, Judge Vaughn Walker issued a lengthy opinion that concluded, "Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license."

AMEN! The same way there wasn't a rational basis for interracial couples not to marry, there's not a reason outside various religious texts for gays not to marry. Hopefully the marriages won't be on hold for long.

-janelane

The most important news and commentary to read right now. - The Slatest - Slate Magazine

The public is largely unaware of this because the conservative establishment in both Washington and the press has been relentless in its effort to separate the G.O.P. from the excesses of the Palin-Fox-Beck-Breitbart bomb throwers and from wacky Tea Party senatorial candidates like Sharron Angle of Nevada and Rand Paul of Kentucky. To hear most non-Fox conservative pundits tell it on Sunday talk shows or op-ed pages, these unruly radicals are just a passing craze. The new post-Bush G.O.P., we’re told, is exemplified by responsible, traditional small-government conservative governors like Mitch Daniels (of Indiana) or Chris Christie (of New Jersey).

But it’s Daniels and Christie who are the anomalies.

Whenever I start to hyperventilate about the state of the US if the Tea Party gets their way (think pre-Victorian England -- no education or voting rights for women or non-white people, a two class system where the rich aren't taxed to provide basic services for the desperately poor (or themselves, for that matter), and a judicial system based on the Old Testament), I think it must be because I haven't experienced politics for that long. Surely once you've seen 20 or 30 years of the back biting and a certain party trying to return us to the fabled "good ole days" with idiotic rhetoric, you get used to it.

It just doesn't feel that way, though. It feels like the pendulum is swinging backwards a lot more than it's swinging forwards. 41% of Republicans think Obama isn't a citizen, for Christ's sake! That's a seemingly insurmountable propaganda machine if we've ever witnessed one.

-janelane, the glass is half-full of Gulf coast oil-water

Op-Ed Columnist - How to Lose an Election Without Really Trying - NYTimes.com

The race has drawn high-profile endorsements from several presumed 2012 presidential hopefuls. While Ms. Palin, the former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor, campaigned for Ms. Handel, who would have been the state’s first female governor, Mr. Deal received endorsements from both Mike Huckabee, the former presidential candidate and governor of Arkansas, and Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House.

Ah, I pity the Republicans. Their main choice was between a woman endorsed by that flaming idiot Palin or a man endorsed by that flaming asshole Newt Gingrich. One's empty upstairs and the other's corrupt as fuck. Go Georgia!

-janelane

Georgia’s Gubernatorial Primary Is Too Close to Call - NYTimes.com

McCain and Coburn, both Republicans who voted against the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act last year, named their report “Summertime Blues: 100 stimulus projects that give taxpayers the blues.”

Their list includes Georgia Tech professors who received federal stimulus funds to understand how jazz, avant-garde art and Indian classical musicians improvise. The report cites an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article that describes the $762,372 study, which involves using brain imaging to learn how musicians do their work.

The researchers hope their project will help develop new technologies that support creativity in music, education and other areas.

“How will this help pull the United States out of an historic economic slump?” McCain and Coburn’s report asks.

Also making the senators’ list is another Georgia Tech project, also highlighted in the AJC article, that was granted $427,824 in stimulus funds for a study on elderly people playing video games, including the Wii Boom Blox game. The researcher hopes her work could help create guidelines for developing other "brain games" for seniors.

Georgia Tech issued a statement in response, saying such research is “necessary for the long-term economic success of our state and our nation.”

“Federal agencies funded research projects at Georgia Tech because they determined that the projects meet the appropriate criteria for stimulus funding,” Georgia Tech spokesman Matt Nagel said. “The fruits of this research are new industries and companies. For example, we are proud that our Center for Music Technology has already developed two new companies with this type of research."

The senators also highlighted a $677,462 research project at Georgia State University to study “why monkeys respond negatively to inequity and unfairness.” Asked about the project, the university sent the AJC a news release from last year that said the research “will hopefully answer questions about the evolution of responses to reward inequality -- including those responses in humans.”

Additionally, McCain and Coburn's report lists an $897,000 stimulus grant awarded to the Georgia Forestry Commission for tree planting. The commission's chief said the plantings are helping the environment and are expected to directly create 20 full-time jobs, plus other jobs in nurseries and related businesses.

Fuck McCain. And fuck all the other Congressional republicans who can't get their heads out of their asses and save teacher's jobs FOR FREE.

-janelane

Georgia stimulus projects make list of 100 that "give taxpayers the blues"  | ajc.com

As the pill marks its 50th anniversary this year, the Catholic Church is making renewed efforts to persuade the faithful to practice natural family planning, arguing that artificial birth control not only violates church doctrine, it harms women's bodies and the environment.

But the church has an uphill battle, Catholic leaders say.

Polls show that Catholics overwhelmingly reject the Vatican's views on birth control. And about half of American Catholics who leave their faith cite their unhappiness with the church's teachings on birth control as a reason they left, according to a survey last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Seriously?! At this point, how many death knells does the Catholic Church need?

Somehow they're managing to leave behind their followers while becoming more in line with the rabid American conservatives that preach abstinence. Looks like another Catholicism-American government conspiracy is order.

-janelane

Forget contraceptives, go natural, church teaches | freep.com | Detroit Free Press