Day: March 27, 2014

IST Op-Ed: Where Is The Conversation?

From the desk of IST editor:

Almost an eighth of all deaths worldwide last year were caused by air pollution, which is now the world’s biggest environmental health risk, the World Health Organization warns. A new study released by the agency finds that around 3.7 million deaths in 2012 were caused by outdoor air pollution, the Guardian reports, but even more deaths—4.3 million—were caused by indoor air pollution, mainly from coal or dung-powered stoves in some of the world’s poorest countries.

The report found that pollution-caused deaths, especially from heart disease and strokes, are soaring in fast-developing Asian nations like China. The WHO’s public health chief says he hopes the report, by exposing the “astronomical costs” of air pollution, will spur governments to do more about dirty air. “What’s needed is collective action,” he tells the New York Times. “The air you are polluting is the same air you breathe.”

I do not think that there are many of us that truly know what will actually happen with climate change or when.  We all stand on one side or the other…..that makes NO difference…..we actually have NO idea.

How long can we continue to debate the situation….when the debate is spurious at best……so far there has been NO serious discussion…instead we throw one liners, slogans and BS at each other………how far are we willing to push the situation?

No one seems to care about these deaths….where are the signs, the protests, the pundits to condemn this situation?  It seems if we are suppose to be a “pro-life” nation….then ALL life should be of some concern….but so far all we have are insults…..all talk….NO action….the true American Way!

We Americans use to be problem solvers….today we are whiners and bullies…..the problems get worse…there will be a point of no return….are you willing to do nothing….but wait and see?

2014 Babbling Buffoons Of Babylon #6

So far it has been an interesting year……lots of crap going on while we were otherwise distracted……and in those days the Babbling…….. Buffoons have not given their mouths a rest….they just cannot shut up and here is Chuq to let you know what you have missed….

1–The Ukraine is about to explode and of course everyone has an opinion on what we should do…..and that includes presidential hopeful Rand Paul……

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that if he were president, he would not let Russian President Vladimir Putin get away with his invasion into Ukraine.

Paul on Monday described the movement of Russian troops into the Crimean Peninsula as a gross violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, and argued it is the United States’ responsibility to take the lead in condemning it.

May I remind Sen. Paul of one thing…”if worms had machine guns, birds would not f*ck with them”…….

2–And then there is this Arkansas judge…….

If you have gay sex, then it is just a “small step” to sex with a dog. “Sluts are just whores in training.” Women shouldn’t make an “emotional decision to divorce because the husband stepped out” if he was a “good provider.” And, whatever you do, don’t go to Disney World during “gay/lesbian week.”

Those are just some of the gems uncovered after the Arkansas blog Blue Hog Report discovered that an pseudonymous commenter on a message board for Louisiana State University fans was sitting Arkansas state Judge Mike Maggio. Judge Maggio, who posted under the username “geauxjudge” offered questionable views on race, sexuality, women and many other issues.

The comment about sex with dogs arose in a discussion thread about a “Vegas woman arrested for sex with pit bull.” Maggio suggested that “TGGLBS sex” — an apparent reference to “transgender, gay, lesbian or bisexual sex” — is a gateway to copulating with canines:

Stupidity has a voice and he lives in Arkansas….

3–First there are the commies….then there were the socialists and then there were Nazis……all about the same person….you know I understand that Obama may not be too damn popular but please people make up your little minds…….read this…..

Given that End Times radio host Rick Wiles is a sane and reasonable man with a long history of being right about a vast number of things, it is only logical for us to be alarmed when we learned from him today that America has been overthrown by Nazis.

As Wiles was preparing to interview John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, on his radio program yesterday, he furiously declared that America has been taken over by a Nazi dictatorship as the culmination of a plot set in motion following World War II. This same Nazi movement is also behind the events in Ukraine, which will lead to World War III where America and other Western nations will be the evil Axis Powers while Russia and China will be the good guys:

One would think that these mental midgets would pick one disastrous political system and stick with it……maybe the Right should form a “coordinating committee” to get their people all on the same page….just a thought.

4–It is that socialism thingy…….it seems anything that Obama talks about is somehow socialism……and guess what?  Minimum wage is NO different…….and good old louie Gohmert speaks……….

I have to first note that when Gohmert was asked about income inequality, his immediate response was to start talking about socialism. When he was asked about “entitlement programs,” he said they give people incentives not to work. If you look at the DeLay video, there is the same kind of sentiment expressed- in fact, for Delay, it isn’t only socialism – the minimum wage and “welfare” are unconstitutional. (One must assume from the context that he is talking about all government programs, like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps).

5–At the recent CPAC….good old Tom DeLay had so much to say….and as usual it is all so much MANURE!

DeLay not only said that welfare and the minimum wage were unconstitutional; he had a whole list of wild and crazy pronouncements, including:

  • that for the first time in a hundred years, progressives have completely taken over the government and that’s why things are so terrible right now. Um, Tom, FDR passed Social Security and the minimum wage; broke up the big Wall Street banks; instituted stiff regulations on all kinds of big businesses; passed an income tax with a top rate of 90%; made it far easier for workers to join unions; and got the biggest expansion of student financial aid in history. Truman got the biggest foreign aid package ever passed; pushed hard for national health care; and railed against “a return of the Wall Street dictatorship.” In the JFK and LBJ years, government created the Peace Corps, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the Fair Housing Act, immigration liberalization, Legal Aid, Head Start, the Pell Grant, and the War on Poverty. All those things you bitterly oppose, except for Obamacare, were passed by past progressives who ran the government.
  • that under Republican passed welfare reform, single moms started marrying the fathers and everything got better than things are now with all this wild food stamp usage. There are so many things wrong with that statement it makes one’s head spin, but let’s stick with the big two. First, more and more people are staying unmarried longer and longer (or never getting married at all), and that includes mothers. Second, welfare reform passed during the biggest economic boom in this country in the last 50 years, the last six years of the Clinton era– of course when there is full employment, less people will be on food stamps than in the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression!
  • that the progressive philosophy itself is unconstitutional. That would have been a big surprise to the writers of the first amendment to our constitution, who said that the freedom of speech and conscience was part of being an American. It would have been a big surprise to Lincoln, TR, FDR, Truman, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Jr, and all the other great progressives in American history. According to Tom DeLay, “Income inequality is a code word for redistribution of wealth, a Socialist mentality. The progressives don’t believe in the Constitution.”

This from the mot corrupt Speaker we have ever had….but the truly sad thing about him is that the TP gives him way too much credit………all this is so much silliness.

6–I love doublespeak……..

Paul Ryan: “I didn’t mean that black people are lazy, I just meant that in areas where a lot of black people live, a lot of people are lazy”

Now that explains……NOTHING!

7–Of course this missing airplane has Obama written all over it…….

right-wing conspiracy theorist Jim Garrow — a notorious con man who now claims to be a former CIA agent — believes that President Obama blew up the missing Malaysia Airlines plane as part of a “jihad” against China.

He said the military forced the plane to “land by wire” at a base in Diego Garcia and interrogated the “nerds” aboard the jet who are working “for China designing ‘classified’ leading edge computer/internet control software and are carrying the matching hardware with them on the plane.”

Lots of theories and as usual only an idiot would believe them……..

Edition 6 is in the can….that’s a wrap…….stay tuned….

Was It Fake Science?

By now all America has heard about the horrendous mudslide in Washington state…….I have been trying to find a site that will blame Obama for it…..but so far nothing….but it is early in the disaster……

I seems that some had warned about this particular hillside as being an accident waiting to happen…….

“This came out of nowhere,” a county official said yesterday of the landslide that killed at least 14 and left 176 more missing in Washington. “This was a completely unforseen slide.” But geologists have actually been making dire predictions about the hill that collapsed since the 1950s, the Seattle Times reports. A 1999 report filed with the Army Corps of Engineers warned of “the potential for a large catastrophic failure.” Report co-author Daniel Miller says he’s always “known it would happen at some point.”

“Frankly, I was shocked that the county permitted any building across from the river,” Miller says, particularly after a smaller slide hit in 2006. The risk is so well-known that geologists have given the hill nicknames like “Hazel Landslide,” and residents once called it simply “Slide Hill.” For much more on the area’s history of instability, see the source. Meanwhile, rescue crews are hoping to “whittle down” the missing list today, and officials tell Fox News that they doubt all 176 are dead. But rain and fears the hill will slide more are hampering the search, USA Today reports. “It’s like quicksand out there,” the county fire chief says.

I am just wondering that all the warnings were taken as “fake science”….you kinda like climate change?  Were there a bunch of people that wrote the warnings off as “doom sayers”?  Were the warnings made the light of jokes and accusations?

This will be an interesting story to follow….that is if you are bored with foreign affairs and politics……..I personally want to hear the excuses for the ignoring of the warnings……will make good fodder for future posts and conspiracies……ya think?

Gonna Be Hot As Hell!

I am sure that this post should get all those juices flowing and the flurry of BS will ensue……cool, huh?

For decades there has been a raging debate, no, an argument, argument has been blowing in the wind…….emotions run high and some billionaires have spent a butt load of cash to stifle the debate on climate change.  I mean the mindless argument that because there is snow there can be NO climate change or should I use global warming?

The debate has gotten sillier by the year…now the entire debate has come down to the exchange of stats and links and when that gets old they trot out a so-called “expert” to insult the other side of the argument…….and in the end nothing is accomplished with the exception of some hurt feelings and the situation gets worse.

But for some the argument is accomplishing the very aim of the debate…..to obfuscate the issue until NO one has any idea of what is being said and the lack of action…….

Heatwave summers will be the norm in Europe by the 2040s as a result of climate change, the Met Office has said.

Average temperatures across Europe will exceed those seen in 2003 – when Britain recorded its highest ever temperature of 38.5C (101.3F) – in more than half the summers that decade.

While the prospect of warmer weather may bring cheer to many, the hot summer of 2003 saw more than 2,000 excess deaths in the UK as pensioners in particular struggled to cope with the heat. More than 20,000 people died as a result of the heat across Europe.

Scientists also warned that climate change was likely to have a series of negative effects for the UK, including food price spikes, increased incidence of asthma and allergies, and more flooding.

Of course this post will ignite a flurry of well meaning comments….the endless array of links and hearsay will be the norm…….and while we spend our time disputing all views the change goes on and people will die……but that is somehow okay….as long as we do not have to face the music….that is until it is too late….and then it will be….just that….TOO LATE!