I’ve been saying for quite a while now that the issue of marriage equality would one day have to be put before the Supreme Court.
Roger M. Boisjoly died recently. He is remembered as the rocket scientist for Morton Thiokol who tried to get NASA to call off the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. That’s the shuttle that blew up and killed the entire crew and the school teacher and all, on January 28, 1986.
Boisjoly and a handful of engineers who were paid to know these things knew that if the shuttle were launched in cold weather, the “O” rings would not expand and there would be a fuel leakage and the thing would blow. He and his fellow engineers tried to get NASA not to launch because the weather was too cold, and NASA called bullshit on that.
The Challenger carried the first “teacher in space,” Christa McAuliffe, and was part of a major publicity stunt by the Raygun Administration that was certain to get Ronnie the Raygunner’s picture in the paper with flags and space shuttles and such. That made it a very important matter for NASA, which was not about to risk its funding by pissing off the Raygunner and missing his photo op.
Ms. McAuliffe and the entire crew perished, and Roger Boisjoly spent a year or two in a deep depression and the remainder of his life teaching ethics to engineers. Throughout his life, he continued to ask the question, why didn’t they listen to me. Why did they insist of launching the shuttle.
I have the feeling that Roger M. Boisjoly was not cynical enough to come up with the correct answer. They launched so that tinhorn dipshit Ronnie Raygun could not miss a photo op.
In passing, Roger may now have an opportunity to get an answer. I suggest he leave the comfort of that part of eternity they reserve for honest men and travel to the special place in hell where they keep politicians and scumbags and traitors like Ronnie the Raygunner. Ask him. They say not even the Raygunner can lie in hell.
I don’t think I even need to characterize the recent flare-up regarding Planned Parenthood and the Komen Foundation. Despicable. But I do have a few observations on the issue.
First, have a look at the Komen budget pie chart. This is an organization that spends as much on overhead as it does on screening and treatment. Given, the group’s concern seems to be more concerned with research and outreach. But imagine that.
Here’s a good graph on Planned Parenthood, by the way, which indicates that 96 percent of what this group does is contraception, STD screenings, and cancer screenings.
I wonder where your charity dollars should go.
That said, I do predict one thing: This is going to be bad for Komen for a long time. Wanna know why?
People LIKE Planned Parenthood.
Generally, people agree with the principles this organization utilizes. They believe that people should be able to plan their own families, you know, by using their brains. They think it’s nice for women to have a place to go to get their biscuits all retrofitted and stuff. Many people actually got their very first prophylactics at Planned Parenthood, which helped them not procreate before they were ready to do so.
I hope the “conservatives” will take note of this and that Planned Parenthood will as well. You have achieved semi-sacred cow status. Wear it well.
I want to make darned sure that Papa Bonk reads this one, so I’m posting it here. It is awesome.
(The original post of this was by Papa Bonk, below. You may want to read that first. But his and my ideas on this were so alike that I thought I’d just steal from him. Thanks, Papa.)
The funny thing is that PB and I had not spoken about this issue, not once, until we were watching, I think it was Bill Maher, or maybe it was Rachel (who, by the way, will appear soon on The Howard Stern Show, I’m very excited about that) some liberal pundit crapping all over Newt for suggesting the notion and for actually laying down the notion of a legal framework for making it happen. Which is surprisingly forward-thinking for this fellow. And PB said to me, he said, you know, well, he said basically what he just wrote just now there. And I said jeez, Pop, I’ve been thinking the exact same thing. And he said yeah, I’ve been meaning to sit down and write that. And, I said yeah, you should man. And he did.
The thing about it is, the space program is something that has the potential to push and inspire and create like no other thing a country can do. It is the most extreme example there is of research and development. It is an endeavor (no pun intended there, Space Shuttle Endeavor) that requires human beings to think bigger than they generally tend to think. You don’t get results in a space program by saying that your mission is to poke a little telescope up there, or that your mission is to get astronauts to live up there for four months at a time. You get results by declaring a mission of enormous proportions, and then you send your scientists off to work to pursue it. This is one of the few things Kennedy did that was actually brilliant. He set this nation off to put feet on the moon’s surface, and by the end of the decade, sadly after his demise, we did.
Presidents should embrace something that is larger than life, that is indeed, larger than their most mundane issues, which to anyone else is pretty much non-mundane. In fact, I think it’s a generalized criticism that many of those of us on my “side” have of President Obama: He seems to be unable or unwilling to pursue the astral plane that the Presidency itself can give one access to. Candidate Obama seemed to promise to rule this rarefied area. President Obama, while insanely accomplished, has yet to poke the vein that inspires Americans to the point of foaming at the mouth. He’s barely even toured the bully pulpit. Fireside chats: Not his cup of meat.
No, Newt is on to something, and us liberalz better prestar atencion. I think his moon talk is actually spot on and is also politically brilliant. At a time when the space program seems to be winding down; at a time when this country needs a little hope infusion, talk of colonizing the Moon is exactly the kind of stuff that might get this horny bastard elected.
By the way, it’s also not a bad idea.
They say if you put a million monkeys to a million typewriters they will eventually produce a novel. Just so Newt Gingrich, who spews an idea a minute, is bound to have a good idea once in a while. I have to say I am disappointed that liberals from Rachel Maddow to Bill Maher have been pooping all over it.
I speak of course of Newt’s promise to build a moon colony. An excellent idea for many reasons, the first several of which is jobs. Nothing creates jobs like a massive infrastructure project, and nothing creates the kind of jobs that challenge our technical work force and put our engineers back to work like big ticket space projects. (Provided NASA can resist the private sector impulse to prefer cheap foreign trained engineers to Americans.) It will also make jobs for mechanics and laborers and lesser classes of workers, not to mention support industries.
A space race will also generate new technologies, which can be spun into new industries and more jobs. Bucky Fuller suggested the best way to fuel economic growth was to design an impossible task and try to complete it. A moon station is not impossible… in fact it is clearly within the reach of our current knowledge… but it will demand that we create new technologies, and significantly expand our development horizons. That means new products and new processes and a significant enhancement of our mastery of technology.
And then there is the future factor. I remember well staying up all night and watching the countdown for the earliest space flights with my geek friends. These were exciting times, we all believed the USA could do anything. No one believed in 1964 that the race to space would stop. We saw it as a continuum that led to the stars, to the adventures of Starship Enterprise. In the last 30 years we have lost that sense of purpose. This is because we have focused our energy and money on meaningless wars and thus depleted our national wealth. And it’s partly because we have not had leaders with the confidence to stand up and demand that we seek bold horizons. Only Newt. A sad commentary.
Finally, we need to move forward with a moon base because if we don’t do it, the Chinese will. At the risk of sounding like a right wing cukoo. No one wants to see the moon painted red.
I want to explain to you here what was actually offensive about Gov. Jan Brewer’s tarmac confrontation with President Barack Obama. Pay attention now because this is the only place that’s going to get this right.
You’ve probably seen the photograph and I do not have time right this minute to steal it from the Internet. On an airport tarmac last week, Gov. Jan Brewer, who is a moron, accosted the President as he got off the plane in Arizona and handed him some stupid note that probably ended with yes no maybe check-boxes. The photo is of her waggling her finger in Obama’s face.
Many are saying that it’s offensive that she was so physical with the President of the United States, that it was a disrespectful gesture, that it was rude to be so combative with the leader of the free world. I agree with those things, but there was one thing nobody’s mentioned that was so utterly disrespectful to the office that it’s downright unbelievable.
The most valuable commodity that the President of the United States has to offer is access to the President of the United States. If you work in the White House, it is made clear how important you are by how close your office is to the Oval Office. Access to the office is what gives the Presidency its power. It is the currency of the Presidency.
Jan Brewer ambushed the President of the United States and, in the process, she stole from the Presidency. She did not secure an appointment to make her points with the President. She was not granted access to the President by the sheer importance of her business. She instead took advantage of what was supposed to have been a simple grip-and-grin photo opportunity and ambushed the President for some airing of grievances.
She might as well have just thrown a shoe at the guy.
Today’s news tells me that Walmart has decided to no longer have greeters in stores on the graveyard shift. Greeters, as we all know, are those retired geezers that meet you at the door, help with getting a basket and tell you where you can find stuff. It’s not a great, important position, but most of these geezers are just trying to supplement their puny retirements … and maybe gain a little end of life dignity… moonlighting for America’s favorite retailer. Who needs them anyway?
And what a big money saver it is. WalMart has 3,000 superstores in the USA, each employing one geezer on the graveyard shift. Figuring they earn $8 per hour and another $2 in benefits, the cost to Walmart for all those geezers is about $10 million a year. A LOT OF MONEY.
Walmart reported net income of $6.6 billion last quarter… yes, I said last quarter. Last year’s total income was in excess of $25.5 billion. So you can see getting rid of those old people is very important to ensure that Walmart exceeds its income levels next year. $10 million here, $10 million there. Eventually it all adds up.
I have just sat down to spend a little extra time with my kitteh. She is a sweet red-haired kitteh who likes the top of her head scratched and who sometimes likes to rub her gums on my arm. Yeah, it’s weird. She also likes you to find that one spot just behind her ear. And she loves to be brushed.
I should clarify of course; she’s not really MINE. She belongs to the house. But when I moved here, I would from time to time stop to take a moment to pet her. And pretty soon, she adopted me.
I am spending a little extra time with kitteh today because of this story, which would really get my goat anyway, but I am, I have to admit, somewhat of a fan of the felines. Here, read on:
When Jake Burris, the campaign manager for Democrat Ken Aden, arrived at his home in Arkansas he found the family cat dead on his front porch. The cat’s skull had been bashed in. It’s eyeball was hanging out of its socket. And the word “liberal” was written on its fur.
The full story is here. It is accompanied by a photograph of a dead cat with a look of sheer terror on its face. So tread lightly if you’re squeamish.
I personally think this speaks volumes to the false equivalencies that are often drawn when talking about “liberals” and “conservatives.” I’m sorry, but liberals do not murder doctors in cold blood. We do not cut letters of the alphabet into our faces and claim that some black man had mugged us. We do not murder peoples’ pets. There is, I’m sorry, a pathology on that side of the aisle that just does not exist over here.
Unless, of course, you can point to the news story about the dead cat with the word “conservative” painted on him. I sure can’t.
I have yet to put down any words here regarding the Republigoats and their attempt to select a nominee to run for Preznit of these Untied States of Amurka. I should of course mention that on the subject I am relatively uninformed, as I have not been able to bring myself to sit down and watch a single of the several thousand debates that have taken place.
I would rather sit through an entire episode of “American Idol.” Live.
Fortunately, however, uninformed seems to be the way to go if you’re a voter in these Untied States or if you want to open up your pie-hole and express an opinion. So, for commentary on the Republigoat Preznitdential race, I am just as qualified as your Uncle Stu who farts at church and thinks nobody notices.
First, can we stop saying that Mitt Romney is the “presumptive nominee?” That’s nonsense, for one thing. It is way too early in the race to be placing that shitty crown on anybody’s head. They’re just about to start primaries in the mid-Atlantic states, and everyone’s all like oh, Mitt’s the guy, Mitt’s the guy. The current Preznit did not pick up steam until he hit the south. Until then, everyone’s all like oh, Hillary’s the guy, Hillary’s the guy. Way too early to tell.
Besides, we don’t want these assholes to have a nice clean selection process. We want them to have a bloody mess. We want to send them into a brokered convention. I want them limping and pulling shards of broken glass out of their face when they get to Tampa. It is tempting, even for those of us who just fucking hate the Republigoat Party, to want a clear winner. It’s human nature to want a horse to break out of the pack. But that’s not the endgame we need to see. I want feats of strength contests over every single last delegate. The muddier this contest remains, the better.
I also find the feeble character of this selection process to be utterly reassuring. By this time in the Democratic selection process in 2008, it was clear that there were three candidates whom Democrats really liked. We would have gotten behind either Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards (thank gravity we did not get behind John Edwards; what a mess). At this point in the Republigoat process, it seems that this party cannot find even one candidate that they won’t have to hold their nose to approve. This is simply because they don’t have anyone.
And the candidate they do end up with is going to have a big job in front of him. I have a theory about Mr. Obama, the theory being that he will wear the cape of incumbency well. Mitt Romney found it difficult to appear presidential on a stage with John McBombBomb. Newt Gingrinch won’t pass the Nixon-Kennedy scowl test. Rick Santorum took his dead infant child home with him and made his own children play Red Rover with it. And the issues will not stack up for this “party” either. Foreign policy is off the table because this President has been utterly successful in that arena. The economy is as I type showing true signs of growth despite the best efforts of the Republigoats, so domestic issues will be a tough nut to crack. Even the time-honored tactic of telling wretched, superstitious lies about your opponent will be difficult to do, at least on the debating stage when the man is there to refute the charges that he’s a socialist Muslim communist bastard who was born in Kenya.
No, things are looking up, I think, for those of us with few other choices then to support the Democratic party. I think Obama is damn near impossible to beat in 2012. One can only hope that his coat-tails will bring us more Democrats, and by that I mean REAL DEMOCRATS, not these blue-dog idiots, into the House and Senate so the man can really get some work done.
So say we all.
