The repugicans Are Behaving Like Unhinged Tyrants Who Realize Their Policies are Failing

Lunatic Fringe

 

There is beginning to be a consensus among political pundits that repugicans are succeeding at creating chaos in Washington to hasten the federal government’s entropy as part of their war on America. There are those who think repubgicans are in disarray and cannot garner the support to impose their Draconian policies on the people, and they may have a valid point, but it has not stopped repugicans from going forward with their plans to ravage the people with more cuts to crucial domestic programs despite the damage to the economy and particularly jobs. In a way, repugicans are behaving like evil tyrants who realize their policies are failing and instead of adjusting their message or changing their course, they have adopted a mindset that if they are bound to fail they will take the nation down with them. It is not that repugicans do not know their policies are damaging the country because they do; they are just unwilling to change because in the final analysis eliminating the government is their goal as their “war against Washington” crusade informs.
At this point, it is not that repugicans are intransigent and creating nationwide damage just to oppose President Obama, although as he noted two weeks ago, there are some in Washington who oppose anything he supports because he “had the gall to win the presidency.” No, repugicans are creating damage to the nation and its people as part of their bent to shrink the federal government and create a libertarian paradise with no central authority to give wealthy plutocrats free rein to operate without restriction or regulation. It is true that the repugican addiction to austerity is in part to make room for greater tax cuts for their corporate and wealthy sponsors, but as they openly admit; weakening the federal government’s ability to function is their primary goal. They will spend the next month convincing their supporters that crucial to shrinking government is eliminating funding for domestic programs despite the damage to the people, economic recovery, and the federal government.
Over the past month and a half repugicans have suffered defeats and failed to impose their economic agenda on the people because some in their ranks see the damage austerity is wreaking on the people and economic recovery. In June, House repugicans failed to produce a farm bill that exposed the level of inhumanity inherent in the extremist wing of the cabal who could not garner deep enough cuts in the bill so they eliminated funding for SNAP (food stamps). This past week, House  repugicans discovered that the Ryan budget they champion as America’s economic salvation is unworkable when they attempted to pass a bill to fund the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. The repugicans could not gather enough votes to pass the bill because abiding Ryan’s budget cuts on top of cuts in the sequester were too damaging for some repugicans including House Appropriations Committee chairman Hal Rodgers.
Rodgers lashed out at repugican leadership and said, “With this action, the House has declined to proceed on the implementation of the very budget it adopted just three months ago, thus, I believe that the House has made its choice: sequestration – and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts – must be brought to an end.” The repugicans could repeal the sequester with a simple vote, but they instead voted for the 40^th time to repeal the Affordable Care act prior to heading home for a month to marshal support for holding the budget and upcoming debt ceiling increase hostage unless President Obama pays the ransom of enacting the Ryan budget.
If there is chaos in repugican ranks it is minimal because the effects of their economic austerity policies, including the sequester cuts, produce the very results they expected and were warned would happen. It is important to remember the mindset repugicans cling to when they know their cuts destroy jobs and slow economic growth that Speaker John Boehner expressed in early 2011 when he learned repugican cabal spending cuts would destroy over a million jobs; he said “so be it.” Boehner gives lip service to easing the sequester’s damage, but in 2011 he said “he was pretty happy” about them and repugicans as a group celebrated their enactment in March of this year despite predictions they would kill millions of jobs and slow GDP growth beginning at the end of this year.
The sequester damage is bearing fruit as nearly 200,000 federal jobs are being reduced in a blatant display of  failed repugican economic policy they limit to severe austerity. Most Americans are already aware of the number of poor Americans who are destined to sink deeper into poverty, hunger, and homelessness as a result of sequestration, including repugicans who made cruel and inhumane treatment of Americans their policy of choice. Unfazed by the damage they wrought, repugicans are gearing up for a budget fight predicated on deeper spending cuts, deregulation, and corporate tax cuts to reduce revenue and bring the government closer insolvency, and if they cannot have their way, they will shut down the government. There is always the threat of another continuing resolution, but even that creates doubt and mistrust about the nation’s ability to be governed.
The repugicans are not in a state of chaos, but the federal government is and it fulfills their two year goal and they have no intent to alter their course despite the damage they have already caused. The idea of a government in chaos is the reason S&P gave for downgrading the nation’s credit, and they laid the blame solely at the feet of repugicans for obstructing governance. Let’s be clear, repugicans know what it takes to govern, grow the economy, and create jobs, but it means having the integrity to tell their supporters that the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, the sequester is killing jobs, the bible is not the Constitution, and that their entire economic policy is an utter failure. Instead they will pursue their current course and create a nation that is, for all intents and purposes, ungovernable and in chaos.
The state of America’s government is exactly what repugicans have sought since Barack Obama was first elected President and their contention that the President is not willing to compromise is false, especially if one considers that regardless the concessions he has made, and continues to make, they have been rejected out of hand. The repugicans successfully made the 112^th Congress the least effective in decades, and they are on pace to exceed their dismal record in the 113^th session with a view to creating another economic crisis when they return from their month-long vacation. What repugicans are demanding informs that their goal is a nation in economic crisis, because on one hand they admit their policies are unworkable and will damage the economy, but threaten that if the President does not enact their policies they will shut down the government or cause a default. Either way, they intend to succeed in creating another economic crisis and it is not governance or chaos; it is sheer evil.

The truth hurts

Pictures say a thousand words

First Day repugican Indoctrination

The repugican cabal threatens CNN, NBC

Lunatic Fringe 

The repugican cabal wants control over what they broadcast

Rinse Prettyboy is threatening not to partner with NBC and CNN on future presidential debates unless they halt production of recently announced programs about Hillary.

NBC announced in July that the network would air a four-hour miniseries called “Hillary,” and CNN Films is producing a documentary about her as well.

In letters addressed to NBC and CNN on Aug. 5, Prettyboy warned that RNC members intend to vote on a resolution at their party-wide meeting later this month to shut out the networks from partnering with the party on repugican primary debates if they do not cancel the programs.

"Out of a sense of fairness and decency and in the interest of the political process and your company's
reputation, I call on you to cancel this political ad masquerading as an unbiased production,” Prettyboy wrote.
"If you have not agreed to pull this programming prior to August 14, I will seek a binding vote of the RNC stating that the committee will neither partner with you in 2016 primary debates nor sanction primary debates which you sponsor."

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Correct response: "Blow it out your ass, Prettyboy."

The repugicans Seek to Decriminalize Rape and Other Crimes Against Women

Lunatic Fringe

 

America is home to a misogynistic sect that holds women in such low esteem that, despite making up over half the population, women are systematically treated as second-class citizens and complicit in their maltreatment are repugicans and evangelical christians. Although women are subjected to institutionalized discrimination in the labor force, teaching, healthcare, and insurance industry, it is the nation’s love affair with the culture of rape that defines America’s hostility toward women. Rape culture is a concept which links rape and sexual violence to the ethos of a society in which prevalent attitudes and practices normalize, excuse, tolerate, or even condone rape in all its forms. Since teabaggers helped repugicans take control of the House and several state legislatures, they have established themselves as the primary progenitors of America’s rape culture with their words and deeds.
For two-and-a-half years repugicans sought to assuage the crime of rape whether it was redefining it to prevent women from abortion services, claiming it is a blessing from a malevolent deity, or legislating medical instrument rape to teach women their place and dissuade them from choosing their own reproductive health. This week another form of rape was exposed and it is little surprise it occurred in Texas where Republicans have made it their business to insert themselves into women’s vaginas against their will and deny them the right to choose when they give birth.
There are multiple reports of Texas highway patrol officers captured by dashboard cameras performing unconstitutional cavity searches on women’s genitals during traffic stops that lawyers and civil rights advocates claim are all too common. In two separate cases hundreds of miles and six weeks apart, women reported, and video-tapes confirm, that Texas state troopers pulled women over for questionable traffic violations and summoned female troopers to perform anal and vaginal cavity searches hunting for marijuana. To make matters worse, the trooper-rapes were committed on camera on public highways, and are deemed illegal by Texas law and any civilized human being outside conservative misogyny circles. According to the Texas Penal Code Section 22.011, Sexual Assualt; “(a) A person commits an offense if the person: (1) intentionally or knowingly: (A) causes the penetration of the anus or sexual organ of another person by any means, without that person’s consent.” In the Penal Code it specifically cites the illegality of a “public servant who coerces the other person to submit or participate,” and it makes both the physical rapist and the trooper directing the rape guilty of what Texas Penal Code labels “sexual assault” that is legalese for “forcible rape.”
The particulars of why the Texas troopers called in reinforcements to commit the actual rape are inconsequential and dubious, but suffice it to say the rapes were committed without the women’s consent and under “color of authority” that makes the crimes all the more heinous. There is also the violation of the women’s 4^th Amendment rights at play and in each case the trooper who directed the sexual assaults clearly had no reason to believe the women hid marijuana in vaginas or anal cavities. The fact that the incidents were not isolated and committed by different troopers at different times and locations across Texas suggest a pattern despite there is no written policy directing troopers to forcibly violate women during traffic stops.
In one graphic video taken from a state trooper’s “dash cam” two women are probed in their vaginas and rectums by a female officer wearing gloves after a routine traffic stop near Dallas. Within a week a second video surfaced revealing a similar scenario during a traffic stop just outside Houston and with completely different Texas state troopers; there are at least five other reported incidents. In the first incident the women were pulled over for allegedly throwing a cigarette out of the window, and in the second two women were pulled over for allegedly speeding; all four women were subjected to body cavity searches by a female officer summoned to the scene by a male trooper. In the second video with clear audio, the women can be heard yelling as the female trooper shoves her gloved finger inside one woman, and in both rapes the female troopers did not change gloves between probes.
It is possible that the Texas troopers were devotees of the repugican belief that there is such a thing as “legitimate rape” and regarded rape under color of authority legal. Obviously if they were comfortable putting the sexual assaults on video, they truly believed they were well within their authority to summon and direct a female trooper to conduct the actual rape. For some reason, the culture of rape in America is much more prevalent than people living in a modern society want to believe, and there is a segment of the population (mostly men) who consider it their holy right to violate women. Last year when the Steubenville rape gang’s crimes were exposed a phalanx of men came to the rapists’ assistance to defend their actions and slander the victim; it is a common practice repugicans have spent the past two years encouraging.
Besides repugicans in Congress attempting to redefine rape as either legitimate or spurious, several repugican-controlled states have mandated medical professionals conduct “rape by medical instrument” or face the prospect of losing their license to practice as well as face possible jail time. In fact, repugicans have made inserting themselves into women’s vaginas their primary responsibility at the urging of the religious right, and it is all predicated on their belief that women are commanded by their deity to subject themselves to a man’s will. The deeply-held belief that women must subjugate themselves to men is part and parcel of the culture of rape a frightening number of men subscribe to, and is perpetuated by repugicans who could barely be bothered to pass the Violence Against Women Act while they promoted the vile concept of “legitimate rape.”
What is astonishing, and incomprehensible, is the number of women who vote for and support repugicans convinced their authority as men justifies mandating intrusion into a woman’s body as if it is their dog-given duty. One is hard-pressed to understand why any woman would support repugicans who regard women as livestock to be manipulated and abused, and it may be that they are so entrenched in the “women are subservient” mindset that they fail to see the atrocity of men violating women. It is also a mystery why any man would support and condone repugicans legislating that their wives, sisters, daughters, and mothers are free-game to other men, but it is possible they too are mesmerized by the thought that women exist as mere objects for men to abuse.
The incidents in Texas are not isolated and are rape under any interpretation of the law regardless it is during a traffic stop on a public highway, or in a doctor’s office to satisfy perverse repugicans and their evangelical support group.  The culture of rape in America is but one expression of the ideology that men have a right to dominate women and it is high time that decent men stand up and fight alongside America’s women for their rights. Regardless it is the right to equal pay for equal work, equity in healthcare expense, or freedom to drive in Texas without fear of being raped by state troopers, the misogyny and culture of rape plaguing America must end

Judge Calls 13-Year-Old Girl Who Was Sexually Assaulted by a 41-Year-Old "Predatory"

Say What! 

A judge calls a 13-year-old a predator, a rape "prevention" campaign targets women. 
The victim-blaming continues.

You know the number one thing you can do to stop sexual assault? Don’t sexually assault anybody. Sounds easy enough, right? So why is the main responsibility for avoiding abuse still so often placed on victims and potential victims?
Recently Jennifer Stephens, a battalion commander in the Ohio National Guard, noticed a sign in the women’s restroom at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base declaring that“Preventing sexual assault is everyone’s duty!” That duty, according to the base’s sexual assault prevention and response program, includes the warning to “Avoid becoming a victim.” How? With tips like “Socialize with people who share your values,” “Pay attention to your surroundings” and “Don’t leave a group situation with someone you don’t know well.”  That’s all sound, common sense advice. The problem is that, as with so many prevention programs, it suggests that preventing abuse is not “everyone’s duty” at all.
Stevens told Business Insider, “I think this is part of the reason victims are afraid to report incidents. If you’re a victim and you’ve done one of the things on that list, you now feel like it’s your fault that you were sexually assaulted.”  And she wrote a letter to the SARC Office, asking, “Instead of practicing victim blaming by making a list of all the things people should do to avoid becoming a victim, how about you make a list of all the places that a victim can go to find safety and help in their time of crisis?” She added, “This type of rhetoric only serves to promote the current rape culture that is entrenched in the military today by putting the spotlight on the victim instead of nailing the perpetrator to the wall.” She signed it, “A concerned citizen and Military Sexual Trauma survivors advocate.” In a statement, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base vaguely responded, “We have implemented robust training for all Airmen designed to both deter potential offenders as well as give Airmen the awareness and tools they need to step in and stop assaults from taking place.” But Stevens says, “In all my years in the military, I’ve never heard anyone say anything about what’s being done to stop the perpetrators. It is absolutely alarming.”
The policy of asking potential victims to figure it all out is hardly unique. Earlier this year, Shaw Air Force Base made headlines for its “Sexual Assault Prevention and Response literature,” with its notes to “be careful” because rapists often target those who are “are young (naïve)” or “emotionally unstable.” Yet even the appalling, accountability-deflecting warnings on how to avoid sexual assault pale in comparison to the regular supply of flat-out blame that victims far too often face.

This week in the UK, Judge Nigel Peters gave a suspended sentence to 41 year-old Neil Wilson after he pleaded guilty to “making extreme pornographic images and one count of sexual activity” with a 13 year-old girl. The judge explained his leniency as stemming from the fact that “the girl was predatory and was egging you on.” During the trial, the prosecution had declared the girl was “sexually experienced” and that “She appeared to look around 14 or 15 and had the mental age of a 14 or 15 year old despite being younger than that. There was sexual activity but it was not of Mr. Wilson’s doing, you might say it was forced upon him despite being older and stronger than her.” Law enforcement also found “a stash of images and videos depicting child abuse and bestiality” in Wilson’s home, but sure, the 13 year-old girl is the predator here.
Preventing assault has to be a game of both offense and defense. We are all potential victims, and we all need to know how to minimize risk. But there is a growing trove of evidence to suggest that when we also work to minimize assault itself, when we address potential rapists directly; we can drastically reduce the incidence of rape. Preventing sexual assault really is everyone’s duty. So how much longer before “everybody” realizes it?

Montreal woman fined $219 for not paying bus fare with exact change

Officialdom Gone Bad 

When Pauline Tantost was kicked off a Montreal city bus last week for not paying her fare with exact change, she was shocked. And then a transit inspector handed her a ticket with a $219 fine for not paying her fare. With her two-year-old son, Xavier, in her arms, she had boarded the bus home to Verdun at around 10 p.m. after having spent five hours at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.

She searched through her purse for $3 in change for the fare, but only came up with a $5 bill. She said she offered it to the driver, who refused because the fare machine doesn’t accept bills. He warned her that failure to pay a fare could be bad news if the bus was to get inspected. Then the bus took off with Tantost and her son on board, while she clutched the $5 in her hand. Two inspectors boarded the bus several stops before Tantost’s home. An employee of the STM later told her that it was purely a coincidence that the bus was inspected. “I find that suspicious,” Tantost said.

A passenger on the bus, Darlene Cousins-Larsen, said one inspector entered the bus by the front door while another boarded through the back.“They went right to the woman who was sitting behind the bus driver with the child. She had to get off the bus,” Cousins-Larsen said. She said another woman on the bus with an invalid ticket was given a warning. Cousins-Larsen approached the bus driver and offered to pay the woman’s fare, but was shrugged off by the driver and inspectors. “He said, ‘No no, it's OK, it's free.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, OK, they were just giving her a warning,’” she said.


YouTube link.

Instead, Tantost was handed a $219 fine for not paying her fare. Embarrassed, she got off the bus with her son and stood on the sidewalk in tears. She walked the rest of the way home. “I think they showed a lack of humanity and a lack of kindness,” she said. Tantost said she told the inspectors she would contest the fine, words that according to her were met with a laugh and a comment about how the only benefit of that would be the overtime the STM employee treating the file would earn.

Random Celebrity Photos

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Hillary Duff

Bad Economics - Bad Parents?

Scientific Minds Want To Know

Do Bad Economics Lead to Bad Parents?

An examination of data from a large study shows a link between macroeconomic downward trends and the way moms parent:

Psychotherapy via Internet as good as if not better than face-to-face consultations

Scientific Minds Want To Know

Psychotherapy via Internet as good as if not better than face-to-face consultations

Online psychotherapy is just as efficient as conventional therapy. Three months after the end of the therapy, patients given online treatment even displayed fewer symptoms. For the first time, clinical researchers from the University of [...]

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Timber rattlesnakes indirectly benefit human health

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Eyes are half a billion years old

Scientific Minds Want To Know

Look after your eyes – they are at least half a billion years old, and a good deal older than your brain.

Around 500 million years ago species already had light-detecting cells that represented
the cone cells of our modern eyes [Credit: Tatiana Makotra/Shutterstock]

The eyes are one of our most remarkable and precious organs, yet their origins have been shrouded in mystery until quite recently, explains Professor Trevor Lamb of The Vision Centre and Australian National University, who has devoted more than 30 years to investigating their secrets.

Prof. Lamb has just published a major scientific review of the origin of the vertebrate eye and vision, summarizing the findings of hundreds of scientists round the world.

"There are profound questions about the eye which are still not easy to answer because it appeared so very long ago," he says. "Why did the eye develop? Why are there many different kinds of eye, including one for insects and crustaceans – and one for vertebrates like us?

"What kinds of animals needed these incredible seeing machines and how did they use them? How deep into time do the roots of vision go? How has the eye influenced our subsequent development?"

The deep origins of 'sight' go back more than 700 million years when the earth was inhabited only by single-celled amoeba-like animals, algae, corals and bacteria. At this time the first light-sensitive chemicals, known as opsins, made their appearance and were used in rudimentary ways by some organisms to sense day from night.

Ancient cells already had signalling cascades that sensed chemicals in their environment, and the advent of opsins allowed them to sense light. "But these animals were tiny, and had no nervous system to process signals from their light sensors," he explains.

Over the following 200 million years those simple light-sensitive cells and their opsins slowly and progressively became better at detecting light – they became more sensitive, faster, and more reliable – until around 500 million years ago they already closely resembled the cone cells of our present day eyes.

"The first true eyes, consisting of clumps of light-sensing cells, only start to show up in the Cambrian, about 500 million years ago – and represent a huge leap in the evolutionary arms race," Prof. Lamb says. "Creatures that could see clearly had the jump on those that couldn't.

"For example there is Anomalocaris, a meter-long predator like a giant scorpion - the "Jaws" of its day - which had eyes the size of marbles, with which to navigate the ancient seas and locate its prey. This beast, which employed the 'insect eye' model with many facets, had no fewer than 16,000 facets containing vision cells, in each eye.

"This generates an avalanche of information, known as optic flow, running from the eyes and along the creature's nervous system. This all has to be processed, so we also begin to see the rapid development of a central nervous system able to cope with such immense amounts of data, continually provided by the eyes and other sensory organs from the world around the animal.

"For the first time animals begin to 'see' the complex landscape which they inhabit."

Our type of eye, a single globe packing in millions of photoreceptors, first starts to emerge between 500-600 million years ago. This was the crucial moment for our vision system, Prof. Lamb contends.

"Baby sea squirts have a simple eyespot called an ocellus, which is basically a bundle of photoreceptors. The adult animal loses this, as it becomes immobile, so vision is not important. This organ appears to date back at least 600 million years.

"The hagfish has a patch of translucent skin on each side of the head where you'd expect to see its eyes, and buried beneath are a pair of very simple 'eyes' with light sensing cells and a simple optic nerve – but no muscles, lens or iris. Hagfish ancestors go back more than half a billion years, so this crude light sensing organ seems to have been the start of something big."

Lampreys also appeared around 500 million years ago, and have a pair of camera-style eyes remarkably similar to our own. These appear to be direct forerunners of the vertebrate eye, which we have inherited through our fish ancestry, says Prof. Lamb.

"From this we can say that the vertebrate-style eye has been around at least 500 million years – and although its light-sensors and signalling systems are very similar to those of insects and other invertebrates, its optical system evolved quite independently from the insect-style eye with its many facets."

Paired eyes also appear to feature in the strange 'crest animals' found by Chinese scientists in rocks that are around 500my old. From then on the basic plan of the vertebrate eye becomes more settled, being used with innumerable refinements by fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and, eventually, us.

"The advent of spatial vision provided immense survival value to the creature that had it - but the process occurred slowly, over countless steps, with the transition from a simple eye spot to the vertebrate-style camera eye possibly taking as long as 100 million years," he concludes.

Historical News

Scientific Minds Want To Know

Crusader Hospital Unveiled in Jerusalem

The 1000-year old hospital was comprised of different wings and departments according to the nature of the illness and the condition of the patient -- similar to modern hospitals.

Ancient treasures found at Russian burial site

Scientific Minds Want To Know

Archaeologists have found the intact burial chamber of a noble woman from a powerful tribe that roamed the Eurasian steppes 2,500 years ago in southern Russia, an official said Tuesday.

The woman's skeleton covered with jewelry and decorations [Credit: State Teachers
Training University of Bashkortostan]

The Sarmatians were a group of Persian-speaking tribes that controlled what is now parts of southern Russia, Ukraine and Central Asia from around 500 BC until 400 AD. They were often mentioned by ancient Greek historians and left luxurious tombs with exquisite golden and bronze artifacts that were often looted by gravediggers.

But the burial site found near the the village of Filippovka in the Orenburg region has not been robbed – and contained a giant bronze kettle, jewelry, a silver mirror and what appears to be containers for cosmetics, said history professor Gulnara Obydennova who heads the Institute of History and Legal Education in the city of Ufa.

“The find is really sensational also because the burial vault was intact - the objects and jewelry in it were found the way they had been placed by the ancient nomads,” she told RIA Novosti.

The vault – located 4 meters (13 feet) underground – was found in the “Tsar Tumulus,” a group of two dozen mounds where hundreds of golden and silver figurines of deer, griffins and camels, vessels and weapons have been found since the 1980s.

The woman's skeleton was still covered with jewelry and decorations, and her left hand held a silver mirror with an ornamented golden handle, Obydennova said.

The descendants of the Sarmatians include Ossetians, an ethnic group living in the Caucasus region, who speak a language related to Persian.

Large votive relief of Zeus unearthed in Bulgaria

Scientific Minds Want To Know

A team of Bulgarian archaeologists led by Dr. Ivan Hristov has discovered an unusually large votive relief of the ancient Greek God Zeus near the Bulgarian village of Starosel. The news was announced by the National History Museum for the Bulgarian News Agency Focus.

Excavations at the ancient fortress Kozi Gramadi uncovered a large votive relief
of the ancient Greek God Zeus [Credit: National History Museum]

The archaeological team uncovered the votive relief which was much bigger than the ordinary ones and thus it was allegedly the center part of an ancient temple.

A large rock eagle appeared flying round when the archeological team was about to uncover the artifact. As the ancient Greek god Zeus was commonly featured as a rock eagle, some of the archaeologists jokingly concluded that god Zeus should have come to look over his sanctuary.

The votive relief was uncovered while the archaeologists were excavating the Kozi Gramadi mount in the Sredna Gora mountain, in the village of Starosel, close to the resort town of Hissar in central Bulgaria.

The fortress, located on the Kozi Gramadi mount , was built in the sixth and fifth centuries BC and it used to be the capital of ancient Thracian tribe living in central Bulgaria.

The archaeologists believe that the region was the power center of Ancient Thrace in the 4th century BC. It was destroyed during the rise of the Macedonian state of Philip II in 342-341 BC.

Blaming Aliens

Scientific Minds Want To Know

Why We Blame Everything on Aliens

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A Guide To The Undulatus Asperatus Cloud

Scientific Minds Want To Know

Undulatus asperatus is a cloud formation, proposed in 2009 as a separate cloud classification by the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. If successful it will be the first cloud formation added since cirrus intortus in 1951. The name translates approximately as 'roughened or agitated waves.'

The breathtaking undulatus asperatus cloud looks very much like stormy ocean waves, and is rather disorientating to see as these waves are upside down in the sky.

Ziggy

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Don't let the Bed Bugs bite

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New trap and lure captures bed bugs more effectively

A new pitfall trap designed to capture bed bugs is more effective than those currently on the market, according to the authors of an article appearing in the next issue of the Journal of Economic […]

Man's new truck is haunted with ghost ants

Animal News

Josh Wise from Canton in Georgia had to have his new Nissan truck shipped in from Florida. Soon after getting delivery of it he started to notice ants. Lots of them. Wise has no idea exactly how many. He just knows when his truck sits still or night time falls, they come out. They don't walk in line, like most ants, instead these run randomly across his truck. The ants are so small, less than a millimeter long, if his truck weren't white you wouldn't see them, at least not until they started to swarm.

Ten Crazy Sports Invasions From The Animal Kingdom

Animal News

You're a professional sports player, deep in the throes of a crucial game, when suddenly you're faced with a plucky member of the animal kingdom. What do you do? Stop to give the thing a cuddle, or move it out of the way?

Animals raiding sports matches aren't as uncommon as you might think. Here's a pick of ten of the most well-known limelight-grabbing creatures. Whether you view them as big annoyances or sweet internet sensations, these unruly beasts make for some pretty impressive images.

ded since cirrus intortus in 1951. The name translates approximately as 'roughened or agitated waves.'

Malaysian villager finds strange rare creature

Animal News

A villager was shocked when he saw a creature that looked like a tiger prawn, crab and scorpion combined when he was in the jungle to collect palm leaves.
Ismail Jusoh, 49, from Kampung Alor Tuman in Marang said he found the creature on the palm leaves and was shocked to see its unique shape.

“It has eight legs and the front portion looks like crab while the back like prawn. It also looks like a scorpion,” he said.

Ismail said he brought the crustacean back and kept it in a tank of water. The creature is known as ngoang in Sarawak or jabot in Johor. It is seldom found and is said to be near extinction.

Animal News

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Animal Pictures

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The Lynx or as we call it around these parts a 'super-turbo charged insane rip your ass off wildcat'

The Daily Drift

The Daily Drift

Nah, let him figure it out on his own ...! 

 

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Today in History

Today in History

1782		General George Washington authorizes the award of the Purple Heart for soldiers wounded in combat.
1864		Union troops capture part of Confederate General Jubal Early's army at Moorefield, West Virginia.
1888		Theophilus Van Kannel of Philadelphia receives a patent for the revolving door.
1906		In North Carolina, a mob defies a court order and lynches three African Americans which becomes known as "The Lyerly Murders."
1916		Persia forms an alliance with Britain and Russia.
1922		The Irish Republican Army cuts the cable link between the United States and Europe at Waterville landing station.
1934		In Washington, the U.S. Court of Appeals rules that the govenment can neither confiscate nor ban James Joyce's novel Ulysses.
1936		The United States declares non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War.
1942		The U.S. 1st Marine Division under General A. A. Vandegrift lands on the islands of Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon islands. This is the first American amphibious landing of the war.
1944		German forces launch a major counter attack against U.S. forces near Mortain, France.
1964		Congress overwhelmingly passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, allowing the president to use unlimited military force to prevent attacks on U.S. forces.
1966		The United States loses seven planes over North Vietnam, the most in the war up to this point.
1971		Apollo 15 returns to Earth. The mission to the moon had marked the first use of the Lunar Roving Vehicle.
1973		A U.S. plane accidentally bombs a Cambodian village, killing 400 civilians.
1976		US Viking 2 spacecraft goes into orbit around Mars.
1981		The Washington (D.C.) Star ceases publication after 128 years.
1984		Japan defeats the United States to win the Olympic Gold in baseball.
1987		Presidents of five Central American nations sign a peace accord in Guatemala.
1990		Operation Desert Shield begins as US troops deploy to Saudi Arabia to discourage Iraq's Saddam Hussein from invading that country as he had Kuwait.
2007		Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants breaks Hank Aaron's record with his 756th home run. Bonds' accomplishments were clouded by allegations of illegal steroid use and lying to a grand jury.

Non Sequitur

Daily Comic Relief

 

Eco-couple told to pull down their 'hobbit home' made entirely out of natural materials ... but without planning permission

Did You Know ...

• Family of three is made homeless by planning inspector's decision
• They built their home from scratch, but have been ordered to tear it down
• The couple admit they built it without first getting planning permission
• Their labor of love was branded 'harmful' to the countryside

By Stuart Woledge

Homeless: Charlie Hague and Megan Williams, with their only child Eli, have been left homeless

A young couple have been left heartbroken after planners ordered their unique 'hobbit home' to be bulldozed, effectively leaving them homeless.
Charlie Hague and Megan Williams, both 25, built the roundhouse from scratch with their own hands, using only natural materials.
But the couple lost their appeal today against a planning enforcement notice telling them to tear their pride and joy home down.
Charlie and Megan, who have a one-year-old son Eli, built the house on private land in Glandwr, North Pembrokeshire, last summer.
Locals nicknamed it the hobbit home, although most people did not even know it was there because it is so secluded.
But Pembrokeshire County Council ordered the couple to demolish their home because it was built without planning permission.
Charlie and Megan, who live a self-sufficient lifestyle, fought the decision claiming it had a low impact on the environment because of its unique construction.
Charlie, a sculptor and woodworker, said: 'We built this house to provide our son with a healthy environment to grow up in.
'We were born in the area, went to school here, and have lived here all our lives. We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.'
The pair acknowledged their property was built without prior consent but said there was no other way for them to afford their own home.
Megan said: 'I know it’s not a possibility for everyone, and our situation here is unique, but if young people are to live and work in the area they need somewhere to live.'

The couple’s appeal was dismissed by planning inspector Iwan Lloyd, who ruled the development harmed the character and appearance of the countryside.
The inspector upheld the council’s enforcement notice, which requires the roundhouse and all associated work, including the timber decking, be demolished.

Middle Earth: Charlie Hague and Megan Williams' home has been compared to a hobbit's. The couple have been ordered to tear their idyllic dwelling down

Hobbits: The three-foot tall manlike creatures were made famous in JRR Tolkein's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings books. Picture here, Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The order gives the couple two months to return the land to its previous condition.
Mr Lloyd’s report stated: 'The character and appearance of the countryside should be protected for its intrinsic sake.
'The benefits of a low-impact development do not outweigh the harm to the character and appearance of the countryside.'
Friends said the couple were half expecting their appeal to be turned down but were still 'devastated' by the decision.

Unique: The couple's front room, complete. They started building their house using only naturally resourced materials last year

Treebeard: The couple have used a whole tree as a supporting structure for their home, fondly nicknamed the 'hobbit house' by locals

Killjoy council: The couple have been unable to convince the authorities of the merits of their eco friendly house

One friend said: 'They are heartbroken - the roundhouse is a thing of great beauty which they put their hearts and souls into.
'They are a young couple who should be applauded for solving their own housing issues by creating a sustainable home out of local materials.
'Instead they are now facing the prospect of watching it being razed to the ground.'
The couple have one last chance - they have applied for retrospective planning permission but their friends said they feared it was a lost cause.

Darkness falls: The lights will go out on the couple's home for good unless they can overturn the Planning Inspectorate's decision

Ziggy

Daily Comic Relief

Did you know ...

Did You Know ...

About vets and suicide: even worse than we thought

That a judge sentenced to 28 years for sending kids to jail for $$$

About these 10 words you've probably been misusing

About how to seem racist

The tea party Turns on repugicans, Threatens to Sit Out 2014

Lunatic Fringe 

From the "Look Ma, the jokes are fighting" and "It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of folks" Departments:

 

When you organize a protest and only 6 people show, including yourself, your movement might be in serious trouble.
Waving a rather sad, given the context, but large “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, Juan Fiol, a Miami real estate broker and Marco Rubio protest organizer, wondered where everyone was. “It was supposed to be a big event,” he told Naples News, as he stood with the five other tea partiers to protest Senator Marco Rubio (r-FLA) for being a “back-stabber” and a “liar” over immigration reform. That desolate July protest must have stung.
Bitter feelings of betrayal have led activists to their next threat: They will sit out the 2014 election:

The tea party is a loosely knit web of activists, and some are hoping to rekindle the fire with 2014 primary challenges to wayward repugicans. But many more say they plan to sit out high-profile races in some important swing states next year, a move that repugican leaders fear could imperil the re-election prospects of former tea party luminaries, including the governors of Florida and Ohio.

The repugicans need only look at how that same tactic turned out for Democrats in 2010 to know that is a disaster waiting to happen.
The repugicans are now paying the piper for their 2010 gamble. Yes, it won them the House and gummed up Obama’s agenda, but it also made them wildly unpopular. Worse still, their own party has been taken over by the beast.
Even repugicans don’t like the repugican cabal. A July ABC poll by Langer Research Associates showed that a stunning 52% of repugicans see their cabal as being on the wrong track with only 37% seeing it on the right track. In fact, for the first time since 1994, a majority of repugicans are dissatisfied with their cabal.
A July Quinnipiac poll demonstrated the repubican cabal’s problem: Forty-nine percent of repugicans believe that the repugican cabal is doing too little to compromise with President Obama, yet the tea party wants no compromise. The tea party consists of the most vocal supporters, the reliable turnout for off year election turnout. With an ever-shrinking tent, repugicans can’t afford to lose any support. After all, the ABC poll also revealed that only 21% of Americans surveyed identify as repugican.
The repugicans keep trying to fool the tea party just like they fool voters; for example, they’re trying to sell Rubio’s immigration reform as border security. But the repugican cabal bred and fed a particularly virulent strain of paranoia in order to turn the tea party against their own best economic interests and keep them misinformed. It was inevitable that at some point, that paranoia would turn on the repugican cabal – and it looks like that’s beginning to happen.
Some of the embittered tea partiers might sit out 2014, but don’t breathe a sigh of relief yet. Finding no national platform, the tea party is following the repugican game plan of 40-50 years ago. The tea partiers are infiltrating on the local level, running for “school boards, county commissions and city councils, focusing on issues such as unfunded pension liabilities and sewer system repairs,” according to Naples News. So the people who know the least about government and governing and hate government the most want to be in charge of it. Since no one will hand them the national reins, they’re taking over on a local level. What could go wrong?
Meanwhile, House repugicans remain clueless and Fauxified against the national reality. They only care that they can get re-elected; they don’t care what they are doing to their party.
Thus the cabal vaunting the morality of self-interest now has to live with the downside of self-interest as a guiding principle. It turns out that it’s not all the wingnut idea of a good time — denying poor people food and cheering the deaths of the unemployed.
Eventually, the self-interest they gloat about bites them in the bum and even the repugican cabal can’t force their own self-interested members to behave anymore. Now the activists are threatening to stay home because the repugican cabal didn’t hate on immigrants enough. Let’s not forget, it was the repugican cabal who taught the tea party how to control via terror, fits, and tantrums.
Turns out, it was the repugican cabal and not President Obama who took it upon themselves to tread on the tea party. That was predictable, as is their rage at being used.

Tick tock, Governors Scott and Kasich.

For every question, there is a Reagan

Lunatic Fringe 

by Steve Benen

 

When Ronald Reagan left office in early 1989, several conservative activists feared history may not be especially kind to the two-term repugican, who spent most of his second term under a cloud of scandal, corruption, and mismanagement. The "Reagan Legacy Project" intended to give the former president a public-relations boost, urging state and local governments to start naming things -- schools, bridges, courthouses, highways, etc. -- after Reagan.
And for the most part, the p.r. scheme has been a great success. Reagan's name is everywhere, and the repugican icon is far more popular with Americans now than when he was actually president. Missteps like selling weapons to Iran to finance an illegal war in central America have been largely swept under the rug.
But those preoccupied with the Reagan "legacy" never seem satisfied. Congressional repugicans, for example, have already built a Reagan building downtown and forced National Airport to change its name, but it's now time to start renaming bodies of water, too.

The House Natural Resources Committee will likely approve legislation Wednesday that would name 3.4 million square nautical miles of ocean and thousands of miles of coastline after the late President Ronald Reagan.
Rep. Darrell Issa's (r-Calif.) legislation would rename the country's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which generally extends from three miles to 200 miles offshore, as the Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone.... The late Reagan, a Californian like Issa, established the EEZ with a 1983 presidential proclamation that declared the nation's sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting and conserving offshore resources, including energy.

Yes, the man the rnc once literally referred to as "Ronaldus Magnus" apparently doesn't have quite enough stuff named after him -- a problem Issa is eager to address by changing the name of nearly all of the water surrounding the United States. Our coastal waters would necessarily be known, forevermore, as Reagan waters.
Why? Because congressional repugicans say so.
It comes a year after Mitt Romney proposed the creation of a Reagan Zone Of Economic Freedom -- no, seriously -- that would include all of the countries around China, which would be bolstered by their new powers bestowed upon them by magical Reaganism.
What I find especially curious about all of this is that today's repugican cabal, radicalized to an extent unseen in the United States in recent history, has absolutely no use for the Reagan legacy. None.
Bob Dole, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, and others have all said in recent years that Reagan couldn't even win a repugican primary by today's standards, at least with his policy record, and I'm fairly certain they're correct.
As we talked about last year, Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times, and he supported the precursor to the Buffett Rule. In his first term, Reagan raised taxes when unemployment was nearing 11% -- imagine trying this today -- and proceeded to raise taxes seven out of the eight years he was in office. It's a fact the right finds terribly inconvenient, but "no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people" as Reagan.
Reagan gave amnesty to undocumented immigrants, expanded the size of the federal government, tripled the debt, backed bailouts of domestic industries, and called for a world without nuclear weapons. Reagan also routinely compromised with Democrats, met with our most hated enemy without preconditions, and was willing to criticize Israel.
And then there's his gubernatorial record: in California, Reagan increased spending, raised taxes, helped create the nation's first state-based emissions standards, signed an abortion-rights bill, and expanded the nation's largest state-based Medicaid program (socialized health insurance).
Maybe today's repugican policymakers should focus less on naming stuff after Reagan and focus more on governing like him?