It’s Premiere week in TWIB Nation with shows from Dr. Blair Kelley, Dr. Anthea Butler, and the We Nerd Hard crew. And the week starts off with some big news from TWIB Prime.
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by Elon James White| 1 Comment
This post is in: This Week In Blackness
It’s Premiere week in TWIB Nation with shows from Dr. Blair Kelley, Dr. Anthea Butler, and the We Nerd Hard crew. And the week starts off with some big news from TWIB Prime.
Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher | Direct Download | RSS
by Elon James White| 4 Comments
This post is in: This Week In Blackness
It’s Premiere week in TWIB Nation with shows from Dr. Blair Kelley, Dr. Anthea Butler, and the We Nerd Hard crew. And the week starts off with some big news from TWIB Prime.
Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher | Direct Download | RSS
This post is in: KULCHA!, Open Threads
I was driving a short while ago and caught a snippet of Diane Rehm’s interview with Margaret Atwood, who has a new book out. Here’s a paraphrase of an odd exchange:
Rehm: What are your thoughts about technology in general and robot sex specifically?
Atwood: At my age, Diane, I think robot sex is not going to be my problem!
I was only in the car for a few minutes, so I have no idea what the context for that conversation was. But Atwood’s response made me laugh.
Open thread!
Septuagenarian Sexbot Chatter (Open Thread)Post + Comments (98)
by Tim F| 273 Comments
This post is in: Politics
Looks like I should have chilled the fuck out, they got this.
After five years of bitter clashes, Republican congressional leaders and President Obama on Monday night appeared to settle their last budget fight by reaching a tentative deal that would modestly increase spending over the next two years, cut some social programs, and raise the federal borrowing limit.
What exactly does “cut some social programs” mean?
increases would be offset by cuts in spending on Medicare and Social Security disability benefits, as well as savings or revenue from an array of other programs, including selling oil from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserves. The Medicare savings would come from cuts in payments to doctors and other health care providers.
Seems minor-ish to my amateur eyes. Naturally I want to know what more expert opinions think. They also found a way to get the Export-Import Bank past Jeb Hensarling (R-Tx), whose committee had held it hostage for whatever reason the fringe right does anything.
As for the timing, THANKS Obama. Really. I literally just wrote what I thought was a great post about how the whole situation looks hopeless and then you do this. I guess in the future everyone gets to be Bill Kristol for fifteen minutes. This could be my Peak Wingnut, may god have mercy on my soul.
One other thought: love the man or don’t love him, I think John Boehner finally earned that 10-to-3:30, four day a week job the Chamber O’ Commerce will find for him somewhere. Considering how it will almost certainly involve some lobbying, I propose that just maybe they find someone else to handle outreach with the Freedom Caucus.
by John Cole| 95 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology, Assholes
This will make your blood boil:
Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue, according to a recent investigation from InsideClimate News. This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation—an approach many have likened to the lies spread by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of smoking. Both industries were conscious that their products wouldn’t stay profitable once the world understood the risks, so much so that they used the same consultants to develop strategies on how to communicate with the public.
Experts, however, aren’t terribly surprised. “It’s never been remotely plausible that they did not understand the science,” says Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University. But as it turns out, Exxon didn’t just understand the science, the company actively engaged with it. In the 1970s and 1980s it employed top scientists to look into the issue and launched its own ambitious research program that empirically sampled carbon dioxide and built rigorous climate models. Exxon even spent more than $1 million on a tanker project that would tackle how much CO2 is absorbed by the oceans. It was one of the biggest scientific questions of the time, meaning that Exxon was truly conducting unprecedented research.
Not only did they know, but they actively worked to bury the evidence and muddy the waters, so now we have a generation of wingnuts who won’t and don’t believe the scientific data. Folks like these guys:
Last Thursday, the nation watched with a mix of amusement and horror as the House Benghazi committee spent 11 hours grilling Hillary Clinton on a bizarre farrago of issues, many of which bore only tangential connection to the Benghazi attack.
Over the past few weeks, the political narrative seems to have shifted from “Clinton in trouble” to “congressional witch hunt seeks to take down Clinton.” Between McCarthy’s accidental truth telling, an ex-staffer confirming the worst reports about the committee, and another House Republican conceding the obvious, it has become clear that the Benghazi committee is a thoroughly partisan political endeavor. Opinion has turned, but Republicans are trapped.
The thing is: The Benghazi committee is not even the worst committee in the House. I’d argue that the House science committee, under the chairmanship of Lamar Smith (R-TX), deserves that superlative for its open-ended, Orwellian attempts to intimidate some of the nation’s leading scientists and scientific institutions.
The science committee’s modus operandi is similar to the Benghazi committee’s — sweeping, catchall investigations, with no specific allegations of wrongdoing or clear rationale, searching through private documents for out-of-context bits and pieces to leak to the press, hoping to gain short-term political advantage — but it stands to do more lasting long-term damage.
The current Republican party and their cronies in the business world are an aggressive and malignant cancer.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Enhanced Protest Techniques, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Republicans in Disarray!, Ryan Lyin' Weasel, Just Shut the Fuck Up
EXCLUSIVE: House conservative leaders say it's too late to stop debt ceiling hike: https://t.co/Rfe37MMZjC pic.twitter.com/a0cPA93EZA
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 26, 2015
From the Reuters article:
Leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives’ most influential conservative group told Reuters on Monday it was too late to stop an extension of the federal debt ceiling this week, but they will not hold it against the expected next House Speaker, Paul Ryan.
Representatives Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and Mick Mulvaney, founders of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, told Reuters in an interview that there was not enough time for House Republicans to rally around a list of demands for raising the $18.1 trillion U.S. borrowing limit.
Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner is working with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to finalize terms of an extension of federal borrowing authority through March 2017 along with a $112 billion deal to ease military and domestic spending caps for two years, according to House and Senate aides and lawmakers…
However, [Mulvaney] said Ryan’s first big test would be a spending bill to keep government agencies open past a current shutdown deadline of Dec. 11. This would have to produce “at least something better than we would have gotten under Mr. Boehner.”
Mulvaney said that in his view, that would mean not raising any discretionary spending caps without an equal amount of spending cuts elsewhere.
That’s Meadows in the twitter pic, wishing he had a mustache to twirl. As I interpret it, the Freedumb-Humpers Caucus will present a list of absolutely non-negotiable demands along with this bill to President Obama, and he will inform them they are free to pound sand into the orifices of their choosing. Then they will go on to their next outrage, because that is what they do, just like my little rescue dogs shriek impotently at the mailman every day, never slacking at their self-appointed “responsibilities”.
Late Night Open Thread: Freedumb Caucus – Curses, Foiled <em>Again!</em>Post + Comments (106)
by John Cole| 55 Comments
This post is in: World's Best Healthcare (If You Can Afford It)
Many of you long time readers remember Larime, the artist who painted the following portraits of our dearly departed Tunch:
Larime needs your help:
My wife Sylv has cancer and cannot get insurance to cover chemo, so we have to pay out-of-pocket. She NEEDS chemo, and soon. The somewhat long story is explained below.
Sylv was born in Canada and came to the US in 1994, back when Canadiansdidn’t even need passports to come here and well before 9/11 complicated immigration. She came because she was offered a job speaking French for a company in Indianapolis that had won a contract in Eastern Canada, and they were going to handle her immigration paperwork. The business went under before any of that ever happened.
She spent what little she had to get here and was now stuck – being estranged from her family, she had no ‘home’ to go back to. She lived with friends, providing daycare while they worked, and we met online in 1996. A year later we were married.
Being disabled myself, we never had much money since she couldn’t work and I had a hard time getting anyone to hire me. We were never able to file her immigration papers, and despite 18 years of marriage, she still has no legal status. Homeland Security knows she’s here and has no issues with it, but neither can she be giveen any benefits or even buy insurance. Without $2k AND a sponsor making over $50k a year willing to take responsibility for her, she can’t get citizenship.
Last December she was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. We can only get her Emergency Medicaid, which paid for the surgery necessary to remove a 15cm tumor and a full hysterectomy, but it won’t cover chemotherapy, and without it the cancer has started to return and spread.
We have chemo lined up, but we need help raising the funds to pay for it. The treatment itself isn’t terribly expensive, but the booster shot that goes with it to keep her from getting sick and the PET scan needed to see if it’s working are. Here’s the breakdown of the three main costs for every three weeks, which needs to be repeated for a total of six rounds:
Treatment: $414
Booster: $3800
PET scan: $1600Total: $5814 a round
That’s about $30k for the full six ronds.
There are additional costs, such as placing a port to put the chemo feed into, blood tests and such, that will crop up over time.
Some of this we MAY be able to get at low or no cost, but her citizenship status makes qualifying for most programs difficult.
So if you can throw in ten bucks, it will be put to good use.