The Daily Drift

Ahem  ...

Carolina Naturally is read in 194 countries around the world daily.
 

That reminds me - Honey, where are my socks  ... !

Today is - National Static Electricity Day
 

Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is

Some of our readers today have been in:

The Americas

Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico City and Mexicali, Mexico

Pikangikum, Saint John's, Dryden, Mississauga, Thunder Bay, Ottawa, Templeton, Guelph, Henry Farm, Montreal, Toronto, North York, Vancouver and Byward Market, Canada

Lima, Peru

Santiago and Lo Prado, Chile

Caguas, Puerto Rico

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Europe 

Krakow, Poznan, Plock and Szczecin, Poland

Ravenna, Ivrea and Rome, Italy

Bucharest, Romania

Neuchatel and Zurich, Switzerland

Kista, Stockholm and Linkoping, Sweden

Lucenec and Bratislava, Slovakia

Clichy, Rouen and Paris, France

Braga, Covilha, Funchal and Lisbon, Portugal

Dublin, Ireland

Ankara and Umraniye, Turkey

Budapest, Hungary

Ruse and Sofia, Bulgaria

Luqa, Malta

Santa Cruz De Tenerife, Ourense and Teo, Spain

Helsinki, Finland

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Vinicne Sumice, Czech Republic

Vienna, Australia

Sulzbach and Kolen, Germany

High Wycombe, Crawley and Kent, England

L'viv, Ukraine

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Zagreb, Croatia

Copenhagen, Denmark

Cack, Serbia

Asia

Kuala Lumpur, Muar, Bayan Lepas, Shah Alam, Kota Kinabalu, Puchong and Kajang, Malaysia

Jakarta, Pontianak and Tangerang, Indonesia

Pondicherry, Chhapar, Thiruvananthapuram, Calicut, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Chennai, India

Port Louis, Mauritius

Seoul, Korea

Petah Tikva and 'Akko, Israel

Riyadh and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Kuwait, Kuwait

Singapore, Singapore

Bangkok, Thailand

Colombo and Kandy, Sri Lanka

Tehran, Iran

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Doha, Qatar

Muscat, Oman

Rangoon, Burma

Africa 

Port Said and Cairo, Egypt

Cape Town, Vaderbijlpark, Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Lagos, Nigeria

Pacific

Homebush and Surry Hills, Australia

Quezon City and San Jose, Philippines

Today in History

1719		Philip V of Spain declares war on France.
1776		Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense, a scathing attack on King George III's reign over the colonies and a call for complete independence.
1792		The Ottomans sign a treaty with the Russians ending a five year war.
1793		Jean Pierre Blanchard makes the first balloon flight in North America.
1861		Southern shellfire stops the Union supply ship Star of the West from entering Charleston Harbor on her way to Fort Sumter.
1861		Mississippi secedes from the Union.
1908		Count Zeppelin announces plans for his airship to carry 100 passengers.
1909		A Polar exploration team lead by Ernest Shackleton reaches 88 degrees, 23 minutes south longitude, 162 degrees east latitude. They are 97 nautical miles short of the South Pole, but the weather is too severe to continue.
1912		Colonel Theodore Roosevelt announces that he will run for president if asked.
1915		Pancho Villa signs a treaty with the United States, halting border conflicts.
1924		Ford Motor Co. stock is valued at nearly $1 billion.
1943		Soviet planes drop leaflets on the surrounded Germans in Stalingrad requesting their surrender with humane terms. The Germans refuse.
1945		U.S. troops land on Luzon, in the Philippines, 107 miles from Manila.
1947		French General Leclerc breaks off all talks with Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh.
1952		Jackie Robinson becomes the highest paid player in Brooklyn Dodger history.
1964		U.S. forces kill six Panamanian students protesting in the canal zone.
1974		Cambodian Government troops open a drive to avert insurgent attack on Phnom Penh.
1992		The Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaims the creation of a new state within Yugoslavia, the Rupublika Srpska.
1996		A raid by Chechen separatists in the city of Kizlyar turns into a hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians.
2005		Mahmoud Abbas wins election to replace Yasser Arafat as President of the Palestinian National Authority.
2005		The Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end the Second Sudanese Civil War is signed by the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement.
2007		Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, unveils the first iPhone.

Non Sequitur

Design revealed for Oklahoma Capitol's Satan statue

A NYC group called the Satanic Temple hopes to install a 7-foot statue of Baphomet at the Oklahoma State Capitol building. They've just revealed their design, seen above.   

From Oklahoma's NewsOn6:

The Satanic Temple says Oklahoma's decision to put a ten commandments monument at the Capitol opened the door for its statute. Temple spokesman Lucien Greaves says it's moving forward with plans to have its monument approved, despite the Oklahoma Capitol Preservation Commission's decision to place a moratorium on new requests.
The commission says it's waiting until a lawsuit over the ten commandments has been settled.

Satanists Unveil Design For Oklahoma Capitol Monument

Did you know ...

That a woman sues because of invasive body cavity searches

Why we must expand social security

About fucking climate change deniers:  How do they work?

That dolphins like to get high

Alan Grayson says it all ...

repugican Agenda 2014

Dear John:

A few weeks ago, the repugicans unveiled their 2014 agenda, and it was . . . nothing.

I kid you not. Here is how it was reported in Politico:

"Last Thursday, a group of House repugicans filed into Majority Leader Eric Cantor's Capitol office suite and received a blank piece of paper labeled 'Agenda 2014.' . . . A repugican aide . . . said . . . 'The problem is we don't know where we are headed . . . .'"

Many people saw the absence of an agenda as a problem. I think that it understates the problem. My concern is that the repugicans don't know where to go, not that they don't know how to get there.

To give you an idea of where they seem to think we should go, here are some actual bills that were actually introduced by actual repugicans last year:r

• a bill to allow the states to nullify any federal law (didn't we settle that in 1865?);
• a bill to require every high school student to read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (mandatory libertarian indoctrination -- oh, the irony . . . .);
• a bill to prohibit lap dancing and jello wrestling (which contained fascinating definitions of the terms "nudity" and "sexual device");
• a bill establishing a state religion (not Islam, that's for sure); and
• a bill authorizing restaurants, hotels, hair salons and other businesses to deny service to gay customers.

If you're trying to do stuff like that, then doing nothing is a massive improvement.

But more importantly, you just can't do nothing about nothing. You're always doing nothing about something. When the repugicans say that they have no agenda for 2014, then in effect, they're saying this:

"We're going to do nothing about the 20 million Americans who can't find full-time work."

"We're going to do nothing about the fact that America now has the highest inequality of wealth in history."

"We're going to do nothing about the fact that our military expenditures are roughly equal to that of every other country combined, even though we face no conceivable threat of invasion, and we spend approximately $50 billion spying largely on ourselves."

"We're going to do nothing about the fact that the United States has run a trade deficit of at least $350,000,000,000.00 every single year since 2000, with no end in sight."

"We're going to do nothing about the fact that the Arctic ice cap is disappearing, the release of methane greenhouse gas from tundra is snowballing ('snowballing' - hah!), and global temperatures may rise by 10 degrees by the end of the century."

"We're going to do nothing about the fact that there are so many corporate income tax loopholes that corporate tax revenue is at its lowest in 50 years."

"We're going to do nothing about the fact that according to some tests, American students have the lowest math scores in the entire world."

"We're going to do nothing about the fact that 434 out of 435 House Members and 99 out of 100 Senators raised most of their campaign funds from big donors [the only exceptions being Sen. Sanders (I-VT) and moi]."

"We're going to nothing about the fact that the federal minimum wage buys less today than it did in 1968, and the bottom 20% has a far lower household income today than it did in 1999."

"After we repeal Obamacare, we're going to do nothing about the 50 million Americans who can't see a doctor when they're sick." [The repugican healthcare plan: Don't Get Sick. And if you do get sick, Die Quickly.]

So it may seem that the repugicans are doing nothing about nothing. But they're actually doing nothing about everything. Whatever the problems we face, their infantile solution is always the same: close your eyes, and it will go away. Close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and repeat "La-la-la-la-la-la-la."

Will that work? No. All of these problems have solutions, but none of them is going to solve itself.

That's our job.

Courage,

Rep. Alan Grayson

“Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.
You've got to have something if you want to be with me.”

- Billy Preston, “Nothing From Nothing” (1974).

How gullible are wingnuts?

You Won’t Believe What Had to be Fact-Checked

by Allen Clifton

 

I get that wingnuts hate President Obama.  Heck, I live in Texas — he’s despised by nearly every wingnut I encounter here.  It’s caused me to avoid political discussions in public.  You’d think that doing what I do for a living I’d talk politics all the time, but that’s not the case in my private life.  Whenever a wingnut I meet finds out what I do, I usually avoid discussing politics if possible.  I’ve been down that road before and it’s just not worth the headache.
The asinine “facts” I’ve seen these people spew are often so ridiculous I can’t even properly respond to them because I’m trying not to laugh.  “Did you know Obamacare requires microchips in every American?”  Who honestly would believe such nonsense?
Well, while checking out Politifact, I ran across what might be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen them fact-check.  Now I’m not exactly sure what their process is for investigating something, but I’m guessing it requires quite a few inquiries about a particular situation before they take the time to investigate the claim and write their article displaying their results.
So when I saw that they fact-checked a claim that “Obamacare” coding would lead to executions by beheading in the United States – I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Not that some idiots believed this (when you’ve seen as many ridiculous “facts” uttered by wingnuts about “Obamacare” over the years, nothing surprises you anymore) but the fact that it was believed by so many people that Politifact took the time to fact-check it was the laughable part.
For the record, it was deemed a “Pants on Fire” lie — their harshest rating for factually inaccurate information.
Granted, I’ve seen wingnut friends and family post some really crazy things on Facebook that they believed to be true, but I can’t even wrap my mind around the idea that there were enough people who believed “Obamacare” allowed for execution by beheadings in the United States.  I’ll admit that shocked the hell out of me.
As a liberal, if I read something with a headline that radical (even if it supports my side of the argument), red flags instantly go off inside my head.  The first thing I do is Google the headline and see if any credible sources have reported anything about it.  Then I go to the article itself to see what source they used.   Then, if there’s even a source, I see where the source got their information — which more often than not isn’t cited or sourced at all.  It’s just some blog filled with all sorts of lunatic fringe radical articles with no factual basis whatsoever.
It just goes to show how blind many wingnuts are when it comes to the Affordable Care Act.  They’ve been programmed to hate the health care law to such an extent that most of them will believe just about any nonsense that flies across their TV screen, computer or smart phone.  But seriously, beheadings?  Absurd doesn’t even begin to properly describe that level of insanity.

Well, repugicans they just can't help themselves

Get this: repugican AGs defending Obamacare against Obama?

There really isn't a more perfect example of repugican Obama derangement syndrome than this, repugican attorneys general defending Obamacare against President Obama. Yes, the only thing they hate more than this law is the president.

Idaho is now among several states challenging how President Obama decided to let consumers keep their insurance plans this year even if those plans don't meet requirements set by the 2010 health care reform law.

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden and 10 other attorneys general called the proposed rule "flatly illegal under federal constitutional and statutory law," in a letter last week [pdf] to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

So at the same time repugicans are raising hell over cancelled health insurance policies, they're raising hell over the administration's fix for cancelled insurance policies. Perfect repugican logic.

NSA: a threat to national security

In an excellent editorial, Bruce Schneier explains how the NSA weakens American security (because the NSA relies upon weaknesses in American technology to permit it to spy) without stopping terrorism (by General Keith Alexander's own admission, the only plot foiled by bulk NSA spying was a plan by a guy in San Diego to send $8500 to some Somali militants).

It's not just domestic abuse we have to worry about; it's the rest of the world, too. The more we choose to eavesdrop on the Internet and other communications technologies, the less we are secure from eavesdropping by others. Our choice isn't between a digital world where the NSA can eavesdrop and one where the NSA is prevented from eavesdropping; it's between a digital world that is vulnerable to all attackers, and one that is secure for all users.
Fixing this problem is going to be hard. We are long past the point where simple legal interventions can help. The bill in Congress to limit NSA surveillance won't actually do much to limit NSA surveillance. Maybe the NSA will figure out an interpretation of the law that will allow it to do what it wants anyway. Maybe it'll do it another way, using another justification. Maybe the FBI will do it and give it a copy. And when asked, it'll lie about it.
NSA-level surveillance is like the Maginot Line was in the years before World War II: ineffective and wasteful. We need to openly disclose what surveillance we have been doing, and the known insecurities that make it possible. We need to work toward security, even if other countries like China continue to use the Internet as a giant surveillance platform. We need to build a coalition of free-world nations dedicated to a secure global Internet, and we need to continually push back against bad actors—both state and non-state—that work against that goal.

How the NSA Threatens National Security

Random Celebrity Photos

Marilyn Monroe  (1945)

Device found on New York-bound plane forces emergency landing in Kansas City

An American Airlines flight made an emergency landing in Kansas City after a passenger left a USB flash drive in the bathroom. The FBI now says the device was taped to the bathroom ventilation duct and contained a small camera.

Car exploded after men sniffing lighter fuel lit cigarette

A car exploded after liquid gas from a cigarette lighter ignited when a man inside lit a cigarette.

Police said two young Arab men were sniffing the liquid gas in their car in Ajman in the United Arab Emirates when the explosion happened. A police official said pressurized liquid gas used in filling a lighter had accumulated in the car when the two men were snorting it to get intoxicated.

Lt-Col Khalid Mohammed Al Nuaimi, Chief of the Nuaimiya Police Station, said the duo admitted to sniffing the inflammable gas, saying they were addicted to it. “The car burst into flames after one of the two men lit a cigarette,” he said.
Lt-Col Al Nuaimi said the mishap took place at about 1am on Sunday. “The car caught fire, following which the two men managed to escape. They sustained minor burn injuries and were shifted to Khalifa Hospital for treatment and medical care. They are in a stable condition now,” he said.

USFWS proposes dropping 1.3 tons of rat poison into National Wildlife Refuge

Maggie Sergio shares US Fish and Wildlife Service plans to drop 1.3 tons of rat poison onto the Farallon Islands to kill non-native mice. The mice are attracting threatened owls who also eat endangered petrel chicks. Says Maggie, "As I read the document I couldn't believe what was being contemplated. USFWS wants to use helicopters to drop 1.3 metric tons of brodifacoum (in the form of loose rat poison pellets) over the Farallon Islands, an area that has been designated as a National Wildlife Refuge. Nonnative mice are the issue."

Before Street Lights, There Were Moonlight Towers

(New Orleans moonlight tower, c. 1882)

Before the United States became widely electrified, it was not practical to build individual street lights in many cities. That’s why some cities built “moonlight towers,” which were enormous carbon arc lamps rising hundreds of feet into the air and projecting light as far as 1,500 feet away.

(Detroit moonlight tower, c. 1900-1910).

They were called moonlight towers because their enormous lights served to replace the light of an obscured moon. They were useful, but ultimately not as practical as the street lights which replaced them. These provided more consistent illumination than moonlight towers, which could not illuminate any area blocked by a building. Changing the carbon rods could also be difficult.

Austin, Texas, though, still retains and lights 17 of the original 31 moonlight towers that it began erecting in 1895.

Ziggy

Are gifted children getting lost in the shuffle?

Are gifted children getting lost in the shuffle?

Gifted children are likely to be the next generation’s innovators and leaders—yet the exceptionally smart are often invisible in the classroom, lacking the curricula, teacher input and external motivation to reach full potential. This conclusion […]

Reading creates changes in your brain — and that's a problem for neuroscience

At the Brain Watch blog, Christian Jarrett explains why that "reading a novel changes your brain" study really matters. Turns out, it has big implications for neuroscience. Not because it proves reading makes you smarter or anything, but because it demonstrates flaws in a fundamental assumption of most neuroscience research — that the "resting state" of your brain represents a neutral zone that you can easily compare to what happens when you do a given activity.

What does it tell you when someone says "I don't believe in evolution"?

Maybe not what you think, says Dan Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale. In an interesting piece about the findings of a new Pew survey, he makes a case for why saying you don't believe in evolution isn't necessarily a sign of being anti-science, and points out how belief in evolution isn't as clearly broken down along political party lines as you might guess.

The oldest known decimal multiplication table would not have been terribly convenient to carry around

It's made of 21 half-meter-long strips of bamboo that were preserved for 2500 years in a tomb.

Random Photos

Eating nuts caused tooth decay in hunter-gatherers

Eating nuts and acorns may have helped hunter-gatherers survive 15,000 years ago in northern Africa but the practice wreaked havoc on their teeth, researchers said Monday. Eating nuts caused tooth decay in hunter-gatherers

Eating nuts caused tooth decay in hunter-gatherers Posted by TANN Anthropology, ArchaeoHeritage, Breakingnews, Early Humans, Forensics, Morocco 4:00 PM Eating nuts and acorns may have helped hunter-gatherers survive 15,000 years ago in northern Africa but the practice wreaked havoc on their teeth, researchers said Monday. Eating nuts caused tooth decay in hunter-gatherers From a site in Morocco and dated to more than 14,000 years old, these teeth are riddled with cavities and other signs of oral disease that may been been caused by eating nuts and acorns [Credit: Isabelle De Groote] Fermented carbohydrates in the nuts caused cavities, tooth decay and bad breath, said the study led by British scientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a US journal. The findings offer the earliest evidence of nut harvesting and storage among African hunter-gatherers, and are based on dozens of hole-riddled dental remains found in Morocco's Taforalt Cave. Dental woes have long been believed to originate in later farming cultures some 10,000 years ago, when people began eating processed foods on a wide scale. Toothaches were presumed rare among hunter-gatherers. But this research suggests they arose earlier than previously thought by several thousand years. The study pointed to an "exceptionally high prevalence of caries," or dental disease, found in 51 percent of teeth among the adult remains. That is far higher than the rate of tooth decay generally seen in hunter-gatherers, which has ranged from zero to 14 percent, and much closer to the level seen in prehistoric farmers, said the study. "The majority of the people's mouths were affected by both cavities in the teeth and abscesses," said co-author Isabelle DeGroote of Liverpool John Moores University. "They would have suffered from frequent tooth ache and bad breath." The latest analysis was done on a total of 52 adults whose remains were found in the 1950s as well as during more recent excavations that were begun in 2003. Scientists used accelerator mass spectrometry to date the remains and potent microscopes to identify the fossils of plant material which included acorns, pine nuts, juniper berries, pistachios and wild oats. There were so many remnants of acorns that researchers came to the conclusion that they must have been harvested and stored for eating as a staple food all year long. Long esparto grasses were also identified in the excavation, and were likely used to weave baskets for carrying nuts, storing them and even cooking them, the study said. "This is the first time we have documented this set of behaviors in the Iberomaurusian," a distant culture that thrived in the Maghreb, said lead author Louise Humphrey of The Natural History Museum of London, in an email to AFP. "It is the earliest documented evidence of systematic exploitation of wild plant resources in hunter-gatherers from Africa." Iberomaurusian people inhabited Taforalt some 13,000 to 15,000 years ago. They are described as "complex hunter-gatherers" who performed elaborate burials of their dead, used grindstones to prepare food and engaged in harvesting and storage of wild nuts, the study said.

Read more at: http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2014/01/eating-nuts-caused-tooth-decay-in.html#.Usw2YrRlguw
Follow us: @ArchaeoNewsNet on Twitter | groups/thearchaeologynewsnetwork/ on Facebook

From a site in Morocco and dated to more than 14,000 years old, these teeth are riddled with cavities and other signs of oral disease that may been been caused by eating nuts and acorns 

Fermented carbohydrates in the nuts caused cavities, tooth decay and bad breath, said the study led by British scientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a US journal. The findings offer the earliest evidence of nut harvesting and storage among African hunter-gatherers, and are based on dozens of hole-riddled dental remains found in Morocco's Taforalt Cave.
Dental woes have long been believed to originate in later farming cultures some 10,000 years ago, when people began eating processed foods on a wide scale. Toothaches were presumed rare among hunter-gatherers.
But this research suggests they arose earlier than previously thought by several thousand years.
The study pointed to an "exceptionally high prevalence of caries," or dental disease, found in 51 percent of teeth among the adult remains. That is far higher than the rate of tooth decay generally seen in hunter-gatherers, which has ranged from zero to 14 percent, and much closer to the level seen in prehistoric farmers, said the study. "The majority of the people's mouths were affected by both cavities in the teeth and abscesses," said co-author Isabelle DeGroote of Liverpool John Moores University. "They would have suffered from frequent tooth ache and bad breath."
The latest analysis was done on a total of 52 adults whose remains were found in the 1950s as well as during more recent excavations that were begun in 2003.
Scientists used accelerator mass spectrometry to date the remains and potent microscopes to identify the fossils of plant material which included acorns, pine nuts, juniper berries, pistachios and wild oats. There were so many remnants of acorns that researchers came to the conclusion that they must have been harvested and stored for eating as a staple food all year long.
Long esparto grasses were also identified in the excavation, and were likely used to weave baskets for carrying nuts, storing them and even cooking them, the study said. "This is the first time we have documented this set of behaviors in the Iberomaurusian," a distant culture that thrived in the Maghreb, said lead author Louise Humphrey of The Natural History Museum of London, in an email,. "It is the earliest documented evidence of systematic exploitation of wild plant resources in hunter-gatherers from Africa." Iberomaurusian people inhabited Taforalt some 13,000 to 15,000 years ago. They are described as "complex hunter-gatherers" who performed elaborate burials of their dead, used grindstones to prepare food and engaged in harvesting and storage of wild nuts, the study said.

When deadly biology puts on a white hat

Prions — the misfolded proteins implicated in mad cow disease — have always seemed to be inherently a bad thing. But new research suggests that some kinds of prions may actually be beneficial, protecting from disease even as their scary cousins cause it.

How tube worms and bacteria can help underwater archaeology

Underwater archaeologists usually aren't big fans of the stubbornly clingy creatures that attach themselves to the sides of sunken vases and other shipwreck detritus. But now, ocean ecologists (who do like those life forms) are making a case for why the archaeologists should appreciate the stuff that grows on little bits of history.

There Are More Stars Than Grains Of Sand

There are 10 times more stars in the night sky than grains of sand in the world's deserts and beaches, scientists say. Astronomers have worked out that there are 70 thousand million million million - or seven followed by 22 zeros - stars visible from the Earth through telescopes. The total is said to be the most accurate estimate yet of the number of stars.

Daily Comic Relief

The 'First' Giant Panda And How It Ended Up In Paris

The discovery of the giant panda took place less than 150 years ago, when a French Catholic priest got his hands on 'a most excellent black and white bear.'

The first westerner to clap eyes on a giant panda is thought to have been a French priest and naturalist known as Armand David. He'd been posted to China in 1862 to spread the Christian word, but was a keen naturalist too and went on several collecting trips over the course of his stay, sending specimens back to the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

Cattle rustlers dumped car with four live cows inside

Two men had to abandon their Proton Wira car that had been modified for cattle rustling after it broke down in Malaysia on Sunday.

The car with the back seat removed was loaded with four cows, rustled from a cattle farm in Sungai Lembu, Bukit Mertajam, with the animals in the boot/back seat compartment. Kulim deputy police chief Chin Soo Song said the farm's owner had lodged a police report on the missing cattle at the Lunas police station at 5am.

"They (the thieves) had taken the Butterworth-Kulim Expressway in making their escape but after the Lunas Toll Plaza, they came across members of the public who were helping the owner to find the animals. They then drove away but their car broke down a short distance away, forcing them to abandon the vehicle and booty," he said.

He added that members of the public joined by a team from the Pertubuhan Perihatin Kemsyarakatan Daerah Kulim (PPKM) later found the animals at around 7am near Kampung Siam, about 15 kilometers from where they were stolen.

Dog found treading water two miles off Florida coast

At about 7:30 on Thursday morning, a fisherman saw a small dog's nose rising above the waves about 2 miles from the St. Petersburg shoreline in Tampa Bay. He pulled it from the water and took it to a marina at Demens Landing Park. It's not clear how the dog got into the water, nor how long she had been treading water before she was rescued.

Anthony Basile was going to pay rent for his boat slip when he saw the fishermen putting the dog on the dock. He took the dog, named Baby, to his boat and has been caring for her since. "It's sad," Basile said. "The dog is lost." Basile said Baby could barely take care of herself and it didn't take long for him to get attached. When he first took Baby to his boat he wasn't sure she would even make it.
"I tried to give her some food. She wouldn't eat, she wouldn't drink. Just shaking scared," Basile said. He sat with her for hours making sure she was warm while trying to calm her down. So far efforts to figure that out what happened to Baby lead to more questions. She has a collar on with her name on it, even a phone number to call, but it has been disconnected. Baby is well trained and friendly. She is clearly comfortable on Basile's boat and is now eating, drinking and making herself more at home.

YouTube link.

But Basile says she knows this isn't where she is supposed to be. "If you watch the dog, she's looking for somebody else," he said. Until he can find that person, he will treat her like she is his own baby. "I'm not going to leave the dogs side. I'll find a home for her or keep her as long as it has to be," Basile said. He also took her to the vet where they scanned the dog and found a micro chip. They found one and have tried to contact the person listed, but so far, no luck.

Animal News

Top 10 Weird Ways Animals Stay Warm in Winter

To conquer the cold, animals have astounding survival skills such as antifreeze blood, lounging by hot springs, and even having gender-bender orgies.

New Bigfoot Claim, Old Bigfoot Hoaxer

A wilderness tracker claims to have shot a Bigfoot named Hank.

Tiny Ancestor of All Modern Carnivores Found

The new species was a 2-pound tree-dweller that likely fed on even smaller mammals and insects.

Animal Superpower -- The Eyes Have It: Photos

Bugs, animals and fish see the world differently, helping to explain some of their unique behaviors.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

About time  ...

Carolina Naturally is read in 194 countries around the world daily.
 

That reminds me - Honey, where are my socks  ... !

Today is - Argyle Day
 

Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is

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Today in History

1681		The Treaty of Radzin ends a five year war between the Turks and the allied countries of Russia and Poland.
1745		England, Austria, Saxony and the Netherlands form an alliance against Russia.
1815		A rag-tag army under Andrew Jackson defeats the British on the fields of Chalmette in the Battle of New Orleans.
1871		Prussian troops begin to bombard Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.
1892		A coal mine explosion kills 100 in McAlister, Oklahoma.
1900		The Boers attack the British in Ladysmith, South Africa, but are turned back.
1908		A subway line opens linking the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan.
1940		Great Britain begins rationing sugar, meat and butter.
1946		President Harry S. Truman vows to stand by the Yalta accord on self-determination for the Balkans.
1954		President Dwight Eisenhower proposes stripping convicted Communists of their U.S. citizenship.
1963		President John F. Kennedy attends the unveiling of the Mona Lisa.
1975		Ella T. Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, the first female governor in the US who did not come into office by succeeding her husband.
1979		The United States advises the Shah to leave Iran.
1982		AT&T agrees to divest 22 subdivisions as part of an antitrust agreement.
1994		Valeri Polyakov, a Russian cosmonaut leaves earth, bound for the Mir space station; he will spend a record 437 days in space.
2002		US President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act, intended to improve America's educational system.
2004		The largest passenger ship in history, the RMS Queen Mary 2, is christened by Queen Elizabeth II, granddaughter of Queen Mary.
2011		An attempted assassination of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords is part of a shooting spree in which Jared Lee Loughner kills 6 and wounds 13.

Non Sequitur

Here's What The 'Polar Vortex' That's Hitting The US Actually Is

by Lauren F Friedman

As tundra-like temperatures and wind chills as cold as 70 below zero fan out across the country, everyone is blaming the "polar vortex."

Polar vortexes, though, are nothing new. They occur seasonally at the North Pole, and their formation resembles that of hurricanes in more tropical regions: fast-moving winds build up around a calm center. Unlike a hurricane, these are frigid polar winds, circling the Arctic at more than 100 miles per hour.

The spinning winds typically trap this cold air in the Arctic. But the problem comes when the polar vortex weakens or splits apart, essentially flinging these cold wind patterns out of the Arctic and into our backyards. NOAA scientists have suggested that warming temperatures in the Arctic may be responsible for the weakening of the polar vortex. When the vortex weakens, it's more likely to break apart and become a factor in our winter weather.
A 2009 vortex breakdown drove temperatures in parts of the Midwest down to -22F. Here's a NASA illustration of the polar vortex (left) and it splitting in two (right):

It won't just feel like Arctic temperatures in parts of the country this week — the weather system is actually Arctic air invading from the north.
Of course, the idea that the polar vortex is responsible for the current cold snap is a strong theory, not a fact. As NOAA notes: "Many factors, including random chaos in the development of weather patterns, can produce such extreme winter events."

Did you know ...

That a real-life meth dealer named Walter White was arrested in Montana

That girls shouldn't feel weird for loving science and math

About assessing six key claims about background checks

That abortion rights groups say it's time to stop playing defense

Thanks to repugican Unemployment Benefit Cuts the Economy is Losing $1 Billion a Week

The repugicans will stop at nothing in an effort to hoard every dollar for the top 1%. This is why they refused to extend long term unemployment benefits in an act that President Obama called “just cruel”.
After letting long term unemployment benefits lapse on expire on Dec. 28, repugicans thus far haven’t been swayed by arguments in favor of humanity for an additional 1.9 million Americans who will lose benefits in the first six months of 2014. But even if they can’t be bothered with humanity, repugicans are also making a mess of our struggling-to-recover-still-from-the-shrub-debacle economy.
The repugicans drained $400 Million from state economies in unemployment benefits last week alone, according to an analysis by Ways and Means Committee Democrats. But repugicans are not done with their destruction.
Never satisfied until they’ve left Rome burning in complete chaos during which no one will notice a barely working House of Representatives or a cocaine buying repugican, repugicans upped the ante to costing the economy an estimated $1 billion dollars per week, according to Harvard economist Lawrence Katz.
Katz estimates that the expiration of benefits for the long-term unemployed is costing the economy $1 billion per week.
“In state after state, Americans who have lost their federal unemployment insurance in one fell swoop are struggling to get by,” said Ways and Means Ranking Member Sandy Levin (D-MI). “Every week that repugicans fail to act tens of thousands of additional long-term unemployed Americans lose this vital lifeline as they look to get back on their feet after the worst recession in generations, and the economy in each state is taking a hit.”
Speaker John Boehner loves to display his “jobs” plan at his pressers, but has yet to actually do anything remotely related to actual jobs. The repugican refusal to renew long-term jobless benefits will cost the economy 200,000 jobs this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO also estimates that extending long term jobless benefits would raise gross domestic product (GDP) and recipients would increase their spending on consumer goods and services.
However, the CBO also noted repugican concerns that extending the unemployment benefits could cause some people to “reduce the intensity of their job search and remain unemployed longer.” Yes, it could do that.
Just like extending oil subsidies could cause oil companies to fail to take responsibility for their operations, and subsidizing WalMart’s employees with federal benefits could cause WalMart to be a lazy, cheap employer.
But that is not a good reason to fail to support the many earnest job seekers or to punish the US economy for a few bad apples. No, just like “guns don’t kill”, jobless benefits do not make someone lazy. In truth, our unemployment benefits are just enough to keep total terror from setting in upon the unemployed. They are certainly no where near a cushy lifestyle.
What we are witnessing is the repugican American dream — starving children from SNAP cuts, “lazy welfare mothers” tossed off of help, desperate Americans searching for work to no avail being tossed off of unemployment benefits that cost the entire economy up to $1 billion dollars a week… And that loss will be blamed upon more of our vulnerable- our seniors, our disabled veterans, our children — and used to justify tossing them onto the cold streets of repugican cabal dysfunction.
The Senate votes tonight on extending long term unemployment benefits, and Speaker John Boehner has said that he is “open” to extending them so long as they are offset. His spokesman Michael Steele put it thusly, “… as long as it’s paid for and as long as there are other efforts that will help get our economy moving once again.” Apparently this is a no since per appearances, repugicans are actively seeking to keep the economy from recovery.
In other words, Boehner is saying Americans should pick who is going to die – and leave WalMart and the oil companies out of the rotation of victims. It’s the Hunger Games.
Note: The Democrats say that their estimate of the losses incurred is thought to be conservative, because it only takes into account the total dollar amount provided per week by the now expired EU program. They note, “Economists generally multiply these estimates by 1.5 to 2 to show the true economic impact.”

Do Nothing Congress Looks To Do Even Less In 2014 By Scheduling Only 97 Work Days

House repugican leadership unveiled the new House work calendar and it shows that the House will only be in session for 97 days prior to Election Day …

 

While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Democratic-controlled Senate look to accomplish a laundry list of items with Congress back in session, House repugicans revealed their plan for the New Year. The plan is simple–do as little as humanly possible. House repugican leadership unveiled the new House work calendar and it shows that the House will only be in session for 97 days prior to Election Day and 112 days through the end of the year.
Basically, what House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (r-VA) and Speaker of the House John Boehner (r-OH) are telling the American people is that if you thought 2013 was the worst year ever for Congress, then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Last year, the House was in session for 118 days prior to Election Day and 135 days total. In total, Congress passed 65 laws, the fewest in history. With this almost non-existent work schedule, it appears that the record is not only in doubt but could be obliterated.
Perhaps it is a bit presumptuous to think that House repugicans won’t at least try to get things done when Congress is in session. That would be fair, except that there was basically no communication between the repugican cabal leadership and its caucus once the last session adjourned on December 13th until Cantor sent them a memo a few days ago saying that they will concentrate much of 2014 on providing oversight to Obamacare. Basically, even if the rank-and-file members wanted to concentrate on a broader scope this year, leadership is going to steer the ship towards a whirlpool of Obamacare whining, attaching the Keystone XL pipeline to any bill they may pass and not much else.
Look, being that it is a mid-term election year, it is expected that there will be long breaks in the calndar to allow Representatives to go to their home districts and campaign. I understand that. However, knowing that there are major items on the table that need either immediate attention (unemployment insurance, farm bill) or have been getting pushed off for some time now (minimum wage raise, immigration reform), it is despicable that Cantor and Boehner are going to double down on doing nothing as a way of legislating.
Hopefully, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will be extremely outspoken publicly against these tactics being pushed by the repugican cabal. We know that Reid will get many bills through the Senate that will be waiting on House action. Consistently putting heat on Boehner to bring up bills for a vote may not work for the most part, but perhaps the political damage of not addressing pressing issues may be too much for even him and at least a few bills may actually get through. Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), Chairman of the DCCC, pretty much stated that is there strategy:

“We’re not going to let them get away with that. One of the reasons the economy isn’t as strong as it should be is the repugicans’ avowed economic theory is to do nothing, and we intend to make that a central theme for 2014.”

If the repugicans think they can get away with being paid to do nothing and use that as a winning strategy to keep control of the House, they are sadly mistaken if they are hoping that it won’t be used as a negative by Democrats against them. Sure, there are voters out there that want Congress to do absolutely nothing as a matter of principle. There are others that just don’t want to see the President get anything accomplished. However, it would appear that most people in this nation don’t want to see elected lawmakers purposely sit on their hands and continue to get paid taxpayer money.

Wingnuts Claim Rachel Maddow Not Sarah Palin Got Martin Bashir Fired From MSNBC

 

There is new wingnut conspiracy floating around that claims Rachel Maddow is really running MSNBC, and that Maddow got Martin Bashir fired.
National Review Online reported,

Few, though, suspect that Harris-Perry will suffer the same fate as her less fortunate colleagues, and MSNBC declined to comment on the matter. That’s because Harris-Perry is part of Maddow’s in-crowd, the liberal, wonkish elite now ascendant at MSNBC.
Sources say it is Maddow rather than Phil Griffin who provides MSNBC’s editorial direction, and that she also holds considerable sway over personnel decisions. “I know I’m never going to get freakin’ talking points from Phil,” Maddow told The New Yorker last year. “Can you imagine? Like, what would they be?”
Behind her back, colleagues call her “the queen,” a not so subtle suggestion that Maddow gets what Maddow wants. And what she wants is a network filled with young wonks such as Chris Hayes, Ezra Klein, Alex Wagner, and Harris-Perry, whose highbrow intellectualism can, she hopes, push the Democratic party, and the country, to the left. On Twitter, Harris-Perry’s show proudly uses the hashtag #nerdland. Alex Wagner’s move to the 4 p.m. hour, where Bashir’s show once aired, has Maddow’s fingerprints on it.
Griffin, who came of age as a sports producer at CNN and then as a booker on the Today show, is, according to a former colleague, “utterly non-ideological.” “He makes decisions,” says the former colleague, “based on 30-day trailing numbers” and lacks a strategic vision. Maddow, who came aboard in 2008, has filled the ideological void. “Alec Baldwin and Martin were outliers; they weren’t part of her inner circle,” says a television insider. “Bashir’s contract was up, he was twisting in the wind when this happened, and he was out of sync with Rachel’s ideology.

Maddow responded with a strong denial of the claims in the story, “This is categorically false. I have never had any role in any management decision at MSNBC. Any source who says otherwise is wrong.”
The NRO piece was based the premise that Maddow is the secret powerful ideologue who is really running the show at MSNBC. The story made a lot of claims that were not backed up with named sources, and was generally consumed by baseless speculation. The point of the article was to blame Maddow for all of MSNBC’s recent problems. Much of the article quoted unnamed sources, but the most unbelievable claim was that Maddow let Martin Bashir get fired/resigned from MSNBC.
The underlying point appeared to be that Sarah Palin didn’t get Bashir fired. Rachel Maddow did. Sarah Palin had nothing to do with Bashir’s departure. According to NRO, Maddow deserves the blame. If Bashir had been in Maddow’s inner circle, he would not have lost his job. In this tall tale, Sarah Palin was an innocent victim of Rachel Maddow’s quest to transform America with an ideological wonk army.
Maddow is the new progressive monster under the bed for wingnuts. She is apparently all powerful, and out to transform America into a liberal utopia. Don’t believe the lamestream media, repugicans. Sarah Palin and her racist agenda aren’t the problem. The real threats to the American way of life are Rachel Maddow and MSNBC.

Darrell Issa Has Sleazy Plan to Restore Veterans’ Pensions By Privatizing the Post Office

Issa's proposal informs that there is no bad repugican legislation that any repugican, cannot make worse to satisfy their dirty machinations to privatize the government, and kill Americans'…

 

The concept behind the idiom  “every cloud has a silver lining” is that there is always something good in unpleasant situations, and repugicans are notorious for finding something good for their corporate supporters in unpleasant situations they created. Darrell Issa created a so-called scandal with the Internal Revenue Service when he directed them to target teabagger groups seeking 501(C) tax-exemptions, and then turned it into something good for him and dark money groups by investigating the IRS for targeting teabaggers that filled his campaign coffers. Late last week, Issa found a silver lining in another unpleasant situation for military retirees whose pensions are being raided by repugicans in their two-year austerity budget and is turning it into an opportunity to kill Veterans’ jobs, harm the United States Postal Service, and give two corporations control of a government program.
When repugicans demanded payment for relieving 4/10ths of one percent of sequestration cuts for the next two years, they raided government employee’s pensions instead of closing tax loopholes that benefit the richest 1% of income earners. Forcing the middle class, working poor, and elderly Americans to pay for the debt the 1% blew up when repugicans gave them unfunded tax cuts has been a recurring practice over the past five years so it was little surprise repugicans took aim at government employees’ pensions to cover sequestration cuts. However, when they robbed government employees they were also stealing from military retirees and after pressure from veterans, they are seeking another program to slash to restore military retirees’ pensions. All other government employees will continue paying the wealthys’ share of sequester relief and Issa targeted a government program he hates to pay for restoring military pensions; the United States Postal Service.
Issa has made no secret that, like all repugicans, dismantling the Postal Service to give UPS and Federal Express control over delivering the mail is a major step towards privatizing the entire U.S. government. It is not that privatizing the Postal Service will improve mail and parcel delivery; the recent holiday debacle disabused wingnuts of the notion that private companies outperform government agencies.  UPS botched last-minute holiday deliveries, and Federal Express (FedEx) was forced to apologize for late-arriving packages; the U.S. Postal Service had a stellar performance record over the holidays. Still, repugicans are Hell-bent on destroying the USPS and Issa came up with a solution that hastens privatizing the Postal Service and restoring military pensions repugicans raided to protect the rich from tax loophole reform.
On Friday, Issa introduced legislation to repeal military pension cuts and pay for them by eliminating the Postal Service’s Saturday deliveries. Issa boasts that not only will dealing another blow to the Postal Service pay for restoring military pensions, it will cut the deficit, but that is not the intent of his legislation. No-one argues eliminating the pension cuts is a bad idea, but repugicans will only eliminate the cuts if they can burden government workers and Veterans with more austerity rather than inconvenience multimillionaires like Darrell Issa.  In Issa’s mind ending Saturday deliveries is a way to repeal the pension cuts and still burden government workers and Veterans by killing their jobs in the short term and privatize the USPS faster than Republicans ever dreamed possible.
Issa knows that ending weekend mail delivery will destroy the postal service’s ability to meet shipping and communication demands of the 21^st Century and deliver the result he and his repugican cohort will embrace wholeheartedly. It would mean an immediate shift of mail and parcel traffic to UPS and FedEx that both contribute heavily to repugicans, but fail miserably at providing universal, low-cost service that has been the hallmark of the USPS throughout its existence. However, Issa’s legislation has more good news for repugicans besides hastening Postal Service privatization and it is a defining trait of repugicans since gaining control of the House in 2010; killing jobs. And it is not just killing jobs, it is killing government jobs and as a value added treat for repugicans, it is killing Veterans’ jobs.
Historically, the Postal Service is the nation’s second largest employer of Veterans behind the Defense Department. In fact, more than 20% of USPS employees, over 120,000, have military service records and about a third of those are rated as 30% or more disabled revealing that of all the nation’s businesses, the Postal Service goes to extraordinary lengths to provide good living wage jobs and accommodations for the nation’s Veterans. Issa knows that cuts to the USPS, like ending Saturday deliveries, is  a giant step toward eliminating an agency renowned for helping Veterans due to its policies and support from unions representing postal employees, a third who are Veterans, but there are just too many positives for despicable repugicans to pass up by privatizing the Postal Service.
Democrats in Congress have offered a solution to strengthen the USPS, and restore military retirees’ benefits by passing the Military Retirement Restoration Act introduced by Senator Jeanne Shaheen. The Massachusetts Democrat proposes repealing the part of the austerity budget that cuts military retiree and disabled Veterans’ benefits and offsets the $6 billion cost by ending off-shore tax havens for American corporations that incorporate offshore to claim “foreign” status and avoid paying taxes. Shaheen’s legislation is co-sponsored by Senator Tammy Baldwin who said the provision will raise more than $6.6 billion over ten years and is “a common sense measure built on the idea that everyone needs to pay their fair share. By closing this one corporate tax loophole, we can ensure our military veterans receive the benefits they’ve earned and deserve.” It also saves the USPS from Issa’s privatization scheme, preserves Veterans’ and half-a-million postal workers’ jobs, and ensures every American that their mail will be delivered reliably.
Issa’s proposal informs that there is no bad repugican legislation that he, or any repugican, cannot make worse to satisfy their dirty machinations to privatize the government, kill Americans’ jobs, repay UPS and FedEx for campaign donations, deprive Americans of reliable mail delivery, and punish Veterans; all the while portraying the privatization scheme as restoring Veteran’s benefits repugicans stole in the first place. Darrell  Issa has a criminal history and it has been painfully obvious he brought that mindset to Congress; particularly since he has been Chairman of the House Oversight Committee. He benefited from instructing the IRS to investigate teabagger groups and he is attempting to benefit from repugicans’ attempt to steal government employees, including Veterans’, pensions, and it leads one to suspect that maybe cutting military pensions was part of the repugican plan to dismantle the Postal Service all along.

'Family Values' repugican Hid His Out-of-Wedlock Child and First Family

Marion Young got a $2,000-a-month lifetime alimony in exchange for her silence, so that Bill Young could play Family Values Patriarch for his cabal.…

First wife (and by many accounts, the woman behind the man) Marion Young got a $2,000-a-month lifetime alimony in exchange for her silence, so that Bill Young could play Family Values Patriarch for his cabal.
The repugican was much revered in repugican circles. When he died, House Speaker John Boehner (r-OH) and others waxed poetic about legendary “family man” Bill Young.
The repugican was awarded the Family and Freedom Award from the christian voice, a wingnut christian lunatic fringe political agitator group.(The christian voice used to be housed at the heritage foundation back in the 70s and 80s.)
No one mentioned that Young received this award just a year after he left his first wife and family, amid a scandalous but unreported affair that included the birth of a child. Out-of-wedlock.
No one talked about the fact that Bill Young abandoned the three children, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren from his first marriage to Marian Ford Young. No one even mentioned their names at his funeral on October 18, until one person took a brazen stand.
How did such a public figure stand for family values while he had an entire family he kept in the shadows and a very un-family values start to his second marriage?
Andrew Meacham at The Tampa Bay Times revealed the truth beneath the sealed records, purchased silence, and a press willing to look the other way.

The proof arrived on June 21, 1984, when the congressman and Angello had a son — Charles William Young II — while he was still married to and living with his wife.
Within a few months of Billy Young’s birth, Marian filed for divorce. It took about a year. A critical part of the agreement, she said, centered on keeping the affair and the baby a secret.
“My attorney said, ‘If all of this comes out, the congressman may be in jeopardy of losing his seat. If we can get alimony from him to keep you from letting everybody know about that, that would be beneficial,’ ” Marian Young said.
“I said, ‘Done.’ ”

You won’t hear much from wingnuts about Bill Young, and if you try to bring it up, they’ll claim it’s not relevant. The repugicans love to cite Bill Clinton as proof that Democrats are morally depraved, while ignoring their diaper wearing prostitute users, Appalachian Trail seekers who abandoned their first family and post, and the many hypocrites of dubious ethics like Ensign.
But the point is not that they cheated, or had a child out of wedlock even. The point is that they do these things while actively championing laws that remove freedom and choice from women, using their alleged moral superiority as the justification for said theft of rights. Women can’t have access to birth control because Bill Young’s Family and Freedom Award says it’s not family friendly or free for women to have access to control over their bodies.
How do repugicans know such things? We are expected to buy into the premise that these family values men are somehow closer to god, and have divine authority, thus while we might disagree with them, when it comes to being righteous and moral, they win. (This is why they turn every issue into an illogical ode to “morality” as defined only by them – it’s a way of empowering the already privileged.)
It’s so much better when women are helpless victims that can be bought off when a man needs to keep his image up.
It’s hardly a news flash that repugicans hold no such moral authority. But they seem to be oblivious to this fact, and there are always cheerleaders to the patriarchs — those women who are benefiting from the current structure because they are in favor with the patriarch, receiving the resources and public status of association with said patriarch.
Yes, Bill Young’s second wife Beverly blames the children for the repugican’s abandonment, going so far in her paranoia to deny access to the October funeral to some who knew the truth about her relationship with Bill Young when he was still married to his first wife, including barring former Gov. Charlie Crist and Jessica Ehrlich, whose father Meacham writes, “was the lawyer for Marian Young during the divorce”.
Meacham got some rather disturbing quotes from Beverly Young, in which she bends over backwards to blame the victims of her choices. “They (Bill’s children from his first marriage)are going to use the media to try to get back at me. It’s been 30 years and it’s a joke. He had nothing to do with them and he wanted nothing to do with them after he tried in the beginning. He would tell me to tell you they are not his family.”

Young even once claimed that he “never had a son named Terry,” his wife said.
Asked whether any photos of Young’s first family were included in the photo montage at his funeral, Mrs. Young replied: “Hell, no. Why would I do that? Why should they be? They played no part in his life whatsoever. Consider that courtesy of me.”

Mrs. Family Values keeps tossing out accusations so that no one asks her why she and Mr. Family Values were having an affair and how this plays into her image as Mrs. Family Values.
See if you can spot the victim blaming and sexism in this statement Beverly Young emailed to the Times, “She (Marion, his first wife) attempted to make him stay in a loveless marriage by having her children”.
“Her children” was an especially golden touch. So, to wit, the repugican cabal argument is that women should be denied birth control and access to safe abortions, but they should also expect to be left along with “their children” on a whim, because the Appalachian Trail calls. If the Trail calls, expect to be dumped with “your children” on the side of the road while Mr Family Values builds a new family for the photos.
Bill Young’s “family values” exemplify perfectly the Republican attitude toward “family” and women. It’s not that repugicans are the only politicians who cheat on their spouses. Of course not.
It’s that they do it and often abandon their first families in order to craft the perfect picture of a “family man” with their second or third family, at the expense and neglect of the other humans with whom they had a contract. They do this while hypocritically advocating for “family values” that just so happen to remove power and control from the very women from whom they demand silence and submission.
If anyone is still confused about why women burn with outrage over the repugican assault on women’s rights, this story should explain it. The premise used to justify the theft of our rights is a lie. We have known this for a long time, and yet the public still seems content to buy into the frame of moral righteousness presented by the repugican cabal, regardless of their actions.