Quote du Jour

He had copious and complicated ideas about cooking and household management, as he had about medicine, law, moral theology, economics, interior decoration and the use of the spheres, and his public spirit, though it was not strong, nevertheless forbade him to keep them to himself.

— H.L. Mencken, writing about his grandfather.

Why Republicans Claim Not to Be Scientists on Climate Change Issue

For now, ‘I’m not a scientist’ is what one party adviser calls ‘a temporary Band-Aid’ — a way to avoid being called a climate change denier but also to sidestep a dilemma. The reality of campaigning is that a politician who acknowledges that burning coal and oil contributes to global warming must offer a solution, which most policy experts say should be taxing or regulating carbon pollution and increasing government spending on alternative energy. But those ideas are anathema to influential conservative donors like the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch and the advocacy group they support, Americans for Prosperity.

New York Times

What is FOX?

FOX News is indisputably the most popular cable news channel. And yet in 13 years, Fox has never broken a story. That’s okay, because it is not in the news business. It is in the news-shaping business. Its programming is an admixture of right-wing propaganda and fear-porn for feeble-minded paranoiacs, served up by spokesmodels who have no clue what they are reading.

– Pensito Review quoted from 2009 in answer to the question “What is FOX?” in “Understanding The History And Purpose Of Fox News,” at Addicting Info.

Less Than Half of Americans Favor Stricter Gun Laws

47%

Of Americans say they favor stricter laws covering the sale of firearms, similar to views found last year, according to Gallup. But this percentage is significantly below the 58% recorded in 2012 after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, spurred a nationwide debate about the possibility of more stringent gun control laws. Thirty-eight percent of Americans say these laws should be kept as they are now, and 14% say they should be made less strict.

Sorry, Beltway Media, Chris Christie Will Never Be President

screenshot-christie-sit-down-shut-up

New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie got into another bully-boy spat on camera this week when a constituent heckled Christie over his abysmal record on the state’s recovery from Hurricane Sandy, which hit the coast two years ago. Records show that the Christie administration has disbursed about $300 million of the $1.1 billion federal recovery fund to New Jersey homeowners affected by the storm.

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In Which Jon Stewart Discovers That the Koch Brothers Have Taken Out Ads on His Show

screenshot-stewart-koch-industries

The billionaire Koch brothers have been running feel-good, folksy image ads about their company, Koch Industries, the nation’s second largest privately held corporation, on liberal outlets, particularly MSNBC and now on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” on Comedy Central.

Stewart fired back with a parody of the brothers’ ad on his show this week. “Clearly,” Stewart said, “the Koch brothers are trying to say to our audience of not yet dying-off voters: ‘Even though you may have heard certain things about the Koch brothers, how bad could they be? I mean, if they were evil, would a baby agree to appear in one of their advertisements?’”

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Iowans Set to Elect Tea Party Senate Candidate Who Claims the Right to Shoot Other Government Officials

Ernst addresses a rally in support of gun rights after a gunman killed 12 people in a Colorado movie theatre in 2012
Ernst addresses a rally in support of gun rights after a gunman killed 12 people in a Colorado movie theatre in 2012

During the 2010 midterms, Nevada tea party extremist Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee in the U.S. Senate race, made a series of gaffes that cratered her opportunity to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The best remembered of these were quotes that surfaced in which she suggested “Second Amendment” remedies might be required both to deal with the “tyrannical” federal government (read: “Obamacare”) and to unseat Sen. Reid if voters foolishly chose to reelect him.

In this cycle, a tea party candidate for the U.S. Senate in Iowa has made a similar, though more oblique, statement that has barely caused a stir. At a rally sponsored by the National Rifle Association about a month after a shooter opened fire in an Aurora, Co., movie theatre, killing 12 people in 2012, Joni Ernst — who, as a member of the Iowa Senate, is a government official herself — claimed the right to take up arms against other government officials:

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