Howard Zinn | Here and Now

I missed the show but plan to catch it somehow.

I was surprised to be listening to Howard Zinn on the radio yesterday. He was doing an interview on Here and Now promoting a project he has called “The People Speak”. Apparently The History Channel aired this on Sunday info here.

More on the project here.

This leads me to start questioning how we are going to teach Gabriel about history and society at large. Obviously it is something to watch given all the bigoted, racist, and sexist crap the so-called Christians keep trying to cram into history books. They apparently think this is Christ-like behavior. I think it’s borderline evil and I really don’t want that crap filling my kid’s head if I can help it. I’d rather he hear real words from real people and that’s where folks like Howard Zinn come in.

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy to Oppose the Senate Bill

Evan a bad health care bill is better than the crap we’ve currently got according to the numbers.

Nate Silver breaks it down in clear dollars and cents.

Josh Marshall questions the sanity of those who want their pet bill or nothing at all.

And Ezra Klein points out that even if, and maybe because, insurance companies are in the running to make a ton of money from this bill, the advantage of having rules finally put in place still counts as a benefit to all of us.

Hey, I would LOVE to ditch my current plan and put my family onto a public plan that doesn’t spend my money to lobby Republicans or douchebags like Joe Lieberman or Max Baucus to do their bidding. But I can’t, but I’d love to be able to see my Mom get some health insurance.

It isn’t everything I want, but it is what millions of folks need.

Plight of the reindeer | MNN – Mother Nature Network

Want to know why is REALLY starting a “War on Christmas”? It is the conservative and their pals in the Big Oil offices who are harming our traditional views.

If the holiday season included the concept of snow and Santa Claus to you, you’d be interested in hearing that our poles are melting faster than ever and that, thanks to climate change causing emissions, reindeer are dying off. Basically, the population of certain caribou have fallen to like 1/7th of their numbers since the 1950s.

Here’s more on the caribou species in question.

Back in September, the International Fund for Animal Welfare asked the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to put these creatures on the endangered species list.

Today being the last day they could do so, the Service failed to act. I heard about this yesterday on Here and Now.

So, you know, when all the reindeer have gone, be show to plant a solid kick in the tailbone of your nearest Rethug Talibangelical climate change denier when you have to tell your kid that Rudolf is extinct.

Gaps found in young people’s sex knowledge – CNN.com

Hmm, years of abstinence-only education and we suddenly just found out that kids know nothing about sex? Gee, I wonder why?

Face it, letting conservatives near education only results in dumb kids. That’s not bias, that is fact.

Be it fake science, slanted history, censored literature, or biology, there just isn’t any way you can get a decent education with Republicans around. Quit giving these illiterates the means to stunting the development of our children.

Michael Steele’s theory about origin of Greenland just adorable – John Knefel – Making a Mockery – True/Slant

Republicans are dumb. Like monumentally stupid.

Don’t believe me? They elected Michael Steele to lead them. Sure, as a Token Leader since they’re racists and all, but really, read his thoughts on Greenland. Amazing.

Then again, these are the same idiots who cream their pants hoping to touch Sarah Palin. The same folks who decided that electing a religious nutjob cocaine addict wouldn’t screw up America. The same folks who look to Dick Cheney AND Ted Nugent for inspiration.

Seriously, go have a kool-aid party out in Nebraska and quit trying to destroy my country and my planet.

You actual conservatives should be ashamed at yourselves for letting this happen to your party. I can’t take you morons seriously anymore.

FiveThirtyEight: My Last Words on the Public Option

Nate probably isn’t actually done with the subject, but here’s a good article about it.

He’s right of course. The public option, much as I’d have loved to move my family to it, was already neutered and restricted for use from nearly all of us. Losing it in favor of providing Medicare coverage for some old uninsured folks is probably all we’re going to get this time around, but that’s still a damn lot more than we’ve currently got.

Bush can turn us into a nation of aggressive warmongers overnight, Reagan can kill our economy and break up the family in just a couple months of trickle down economics, but it took decades of workplace violence to get a 40 hour week. It took the Great Depression to give us Social Security, it took losing dozens of college kids, JFK, RFK, and MLK Jr. to get close to starting to have racial equality in this nation. We just had a pretty bad recession and hopefully we’ll get some kind of health care reform out of it.

It sucks. It really, really sucks how easy it is for men to do evil and how hard it is to just get in the ballpark of doing things right. But when your opposition is a pack of racist Talibangelical hypocrite blowhards in the employ of wealthy capitalist shitheels, sometimes you unfortunately have to take what you can get.