tvashtarkatena

How about a hope-filled message of ephemeral somethingness? I find it helps to have a bit of focus on reality when problem solving. If the events of this past week aren't good examples of that...

African malnutrition: 1) Lack of birth control 2) Sectarian violence Thank you Religion.

What doesn't fascinate me about crap like this is all the glaringly obvious problems an individual like Kimmo could focus his anxieties and energies on. In a country of endless, manufactured global war, where the government is spying on all of us, and where we can be made to go away indefinitely...a country that has twice as many people in prisons than Mother Russia and 7 times more than China, those bastions of liberty and justice, why bother with the small potatoes? I understand the borderline schitzoid need satisfied by being a conspiracy whistleblower, but it really isn't about being an agent of change, is it? More about being a secret agent of change, I reckon.

We've all recognized that Bone is a national security expert, and consider his links accordingly. Kimmo, do you possess any special expertise in immunology other than Concerned Citizen?

You've all exceeded your two post FBI threshold. Expect a visit in the near future. If you can run a sub 6 minute mile, start now.

Rob is rarely substanceless.

The Truth is always one click away. Rob, what are you THINKING? Do you know how easy is it to make a bike commuter's demise look like an accident???????

This was the sum total of my military sex education back in 79: [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW3AJ9xPSWE

The subject of vaccines does seem to cause mental retardation, although I haven't seen any studies to support that.

I'm too busy rechecking the voltage in all my outlets to weigh in on this important topic.

Party of Whiners Blame List so far (not in order) Americans who want stuff Lamestream media Pollsters Weak candidates (presumably picked by 'someone else') The Democrats! Sandy 'Messaging' Todd Akins Hispanics

The current GOP base's population is dwindling by 2% every 4 years. That's the end result of all the demographic stats from a political standpoint. That's why this was a watershed election. The GOP will continue to lose by increasingly wider margins without a substantive change in platform. Outreach, money, or other window dressing isn't going to cut it anymore. The party of bullshit is going to have to return to the age of reason. I'm not sure what their platform will be, considering that its pretty much 100% bullshit right now, but that's their problem to solve, or not.

If a calcified tea party does dessicate the GOP to the point where it eventually blows away, thas coo wit me. Texas will be a swing state in 12 years. Buh bye. Various factions of the GOP leadership and their religious lamprey seem to be wrestling with what pretty new wrapping paper they're going to wrap the same old hardened turd of a platform in to attract the three or four Florida Cubans they haven't been able to reach yet. Compassionate bigotry? Good luck with that.

I've never gotten a flu shot. I wish I could say that I knew they might be bad for you all along, but I just hate needles.

You can google the Rightiest, Tightiest blogger in the solar system and generalize their rants to support your pet thesis - after all, that's what the GOP does, but it's probably better to put more stock into what the RNC, GOP elected officials, and more long lived Righty rags and think tanks are saying. That's "all over the map" right now, but the consensus is the party's got a problem, and its a fundamental one. There's a lot of confusion, but the growing portion of the GOP that's tired of wasting their donations only to get their asses handed to them for religious craziness and tea party ego trips they couldn't give two shits are having a say about things finally. The GOP is certainly the party of self injected anal smoke, but the principle they hold most dear is a contempt for losers, and that would be themselves. Look, there are still plenty of tea party morons who won't get the message...ever, but the longer the GOP lets those assholes window sit, the more fractured the party becomes, the less money they get, and the more elections they'll lose. It's really wonderful to watch, actually. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of fascists. I 502 was like flipping the bird to the Party of Punishment, and R 74 was like taking that bird and performing a very rough prostate exam. Some people like football...

See? The Kinder, Gentler FOX is already in action: Arguing is Pointless The pic next to this piece on the main page is a spiral galaxy...they still need a little help with their IT department, apparently.

I wasn't aware that O'Reilly was a party strategist or elected official. Thanks for the heads up. More people listen to Rush, actually - but that doesn't stop a large and growing portion of the GOP, particularly its younger membership, from thinking he's absolutely batshit. FOX is a business. They'll take the pulse of their audience and continue to feed them what they want to hear in whatever direction that goes - if the GOP suddenly decides to love da gays (and I predict they will pretty soon) FOX will start loving em, too. Hey, they can always fall back on the Benghazi coverup. Seems like they intend to rerun that story for the next 4 years, if not longer. Half of their piece on Patraeus this morning was about Benghazi you know, cuz he's in the CIA and the CIA was in libya...LOL

The GOP is dazed and confuzed right now after having their teeth kicked in. They're response is anything but monolithic. One thing is for sure, the call for reform is finally being heard on the national stage. The whole bubble/group think circle jerk is over, at least temporarily. They're not going to get another 1.2 billion for a national election without offering a different product, cuz the last one was DOA out of the box. I know this first hand - I saw Mygyn Kylly basically tell Karl Rove he was full of shit on TV. Yes, teabaggers may still be reelected by their loony districts - for a while, but those who refuse to tow the line and cause the kind of collateral damage we just saw may find funding from the RNC harder to obtain and key committee memberships harder to come by. Congress and the GOP have a few ways to marginalizing rogue members who won't be coached, even if voters won't. The 'party of the big tent' is actually quite authoritarian and centralized in its messaging and strategy - it doesn't tolerate self serving behavior of its members very well.

PS A lot of your other products are bullshit, though.

Dear Big Pharma, Thank you for citalopram, xoxo, T

The GOP will reform. A huge, dissatisfied faction of that party has been having that conversation for a while now. I've outlined what they should do already - what they will do remains to be seen, but it won't be what they've been doing to date. On this we disagree - I don't buy the theory that the GOP is forever calcified in its present form. They may not be as data driven as the Dems, but that doesn't mean they're not data driven at all. The primary change will be a distancing from a religious right that has caused so much damage. In response to a decrease in political power, and due to changing attitudes in the face of the nation's continue maturation, the religious right will reform, too. You can only run from reality for so long before it catches up.

Own your own ignorance, like the word "evil". Don't attribute it to me. Thank you for complementing my eloquence, however. The data speaks for itself. It long term stuff. Age of reason and all that.

Being two years early in my prediction is a flaw I'll happily own. This election was a tipping point for the GOP. Bigots become non-bigots through exposure and education - that river rarely flows the other direction. A perfect storm of social media, a new generation, changing demographics, and an undeniable GOP history destructive policies, open bigotry, obstruction, flagrant entitlement to privilege, and contempt for the American values of fairness, honesty, live and let live, and rationality has finally produced a definitive defeat for a myth driven movement, based on anger and fear rather than love and compassion, that was doomed to failure from its cynical inception. Regarding civil liberties - marital equality, the inherent cruelty and discrimination of our War on Drugs, there is an absolute right and wrong. The GOP bet on Wrong and lost in the face of common American decency and rationality. The same goes for science versus myth. One is right, the other is wrong. Given the undeniable direction that American attitudes are moving, we're not going back to the age of religious myth or bigotry, ever. Let's look at LGBT rights, for example. After 30 defeats at the hands of voters, marital equality won four victories. This success will be copied across the country. At the federal level, DODT is dead, and DOMA has lost 7 in 7 in federal court. Full reform may take a few more years, but the religious right has lost their Waterloo, despite spending record amounts of money and turning out record amounts of their voters. Many of their faith leaders are now publicly recognizing this. Religion is going away - 30% of folks under 30 are nonreligious, but internal reform and a retreat from politics will come much sooner than its inevitable demise. It's hard to bullshit an electorate that has so many instant avenues for civic discussion and obtaining information in their pockets 24/7. Welcome to the American Spring. It's been a long time coming. Things won't change for the better overnight, but the river will continue to flow towards the sea, as it has slowly been doing for thousands of years.

A teacher exposed to hundreds of kids a day might solve the risk/benefit equation differently than others.

a healthy, zesty way to sell your book, fo sho