Queer Talk: An Allys Guide to Issues Facing LGBT
Americans

post from Taylor Marsh on 15 September 2012 09:00:33 AM. © Taylor Marsh

Released this week, An Ally?s Guide to Issues Facing LGBT Americans… is a primer introducing the major areas in which unfair laws and stigma create extra burdens for LGBT Americans and prevent them from having the chance to pursue health and[...]

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g-lgbt-americans/

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If Republicans Could Do It All Over Again, Who
Would Be Their Nominee-- Santorum Newt That Texas Governor Palin

post from DownWithTyranny! on 15 September 2012 09:00:12 AM. © DownWithTyranny!

Anyone but Mitt, I'm sure. Even before swing state polls were released showing Obama with increasingly unassailable leads in Florida, Virginia and Ohio, Laura Ingraham gave a preview on her right-wing psycho show of what awaits Romney after he loses in November.

?If you can?t beat Barack Obama with this record, then shut down the party. Shut it down, start new, with new people because this is a give-me election, or at least it should be. And the millions of dollars-- I keep going back to the million and millions and millions of dollars that are paid to these political consultants election after election. We hire people who have lost previous campaigns, that run campaigns that have failed, who have message campaigns where the message fell flat-- and they keep getting rehired. I don?t understand that. I don?t know why those are the people you hire.?

The Republican circular firing squad is starting earlier than usual, but the candidate is much worse than usual... and so is the right-wing's commitment to a sense of unreality. They really have created and continue to live in a bizarre little bubble around Fox News and Hate Talk Radio and some silly right-wing rags and they insist that this wishful thinking is reality. Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough, now a right-leaning MSNBC talk show host was even more scathing than Ingraham in his assessment of Romney's performance. "Voters who like moderates can?t trust him," he wrote in Politico Wednesday. "Conservatives who are desperate for victory don?t believe him. And the election Republicans should be winning seems to be slipping further from their grasp." And he was just warming up.

Who told Mr. Romney to issue a political broadside against the commander in chief the day after a U.S. ambassador was murdered?

And who decided that Romney would use his general election campaign to stand for absolutely nothing? The Wall Street Journal described this ideological listlessness as a ?pre-existing decision.? The question conservatives should be asking is whether that strategy was hatched by a misguided consultant or the candidate himself.

Whoever is responsible needs to know that replacing real conservative ideas with a flood of negative 30-second ads is a pathway to defeat.

Mitt Romney is in trouble. Not because of a boring convention or a bloodless speech or a grossly inappropriate press conference, but rather because the man refuses to stick his neck out and take a stand on the critical issues of our time.

Margaret Thatcher was tough and unapologetic about what she believed. Ronald Reagan was tough and unapologetic about what he believed. They won their campaigns, changed their party and transformed their countries because they were conservatives who dared to tell voters they planned to radically transform their governments. They got elected and did just that.

Craven calculation, on the other hand, does not pay off for conservatives. Romney needed to decide long ago who he was: the last of the Rockefeller Republicans (and thus somebody who probably wouldn?t have gotten through Iowa) or a genuine movement conservative with detailed ideas about how to right the country.

Instead, we have a nominee who represents the worst of both worlds. Any swing voter attracted by moderate Republicanism can?t vote for a man who ran away from his core convictions. And conservative voters don?t believe Romney has any core convictions. This has all the makings of a Greek tragedy, all playing out on C-SPAN.

After the jaw-dropping way Romney cravenly mishandled and politicized the attacks on American diplomats in Libya and Egypt-- even before we get to the question of whether or not his campaign was involved in the offensive anti-Muslim movie that was at the heart of it-- USAToday observed dispassionately that "[a] presidential race that has been neck-and-neck for months suddenly isn't." The latest Gallup poll was just more really bad news for Romney and really bad news for the Wall Street backers who thought this campaign would be a good national launching pad for their Wisconsin Frankenstein monster:

Romney has given up-- stopped advertising, shuttered offices, moved staff out of-- in Michigan and ceded the state in which he grew up in to Obama. He has also given up on Pennsylvania, although there is still some hope in his camp that if the state legislature's plan to disenfranchise hundreds and thousands of African-Americans, students and poor people passes muster in the state Supreme Court, they might still eke out a victory. In fact, cheating and trying to steal the election is probably the only hope they now have. No one ever thought Obama would win Kansas but virulently racist Romney backer Kris Kobach is threatening to remove President Obama's name from the ballot because he's not satisfied with his Hawaiian birth certificate. Kansas is hopelessly red, as though too many of its citizens has been drinking some mind-altering water. There's not even a Democrat running for Congress in a position to take advantage of Kobach's crazy threats. Something tells me, though, that moderate and independent voters in other states may not react sympathetically to removing the president's name from the presidential ballot.

Romney can change the subject-- and in a big way. All he has to do is release his tax returns. Talking heads will stop talking about anything else for a couple of cycles:

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This week in science: Bird brains

post from Daily Kos on 15 September 2012 09:00:06 AM. © Daily Kos

The video above was created by stitching together pieces of NASA imagery using computer effects. Via TPM?which has been doing a bang up job on science lately?the creator explains:

?I was motivated to create this video from the first moment that I saw the original four frames-per-second footage,? Canning wrote to TPM in a Reddit message. ?I could visualize exactly what steps would need to be taken to make it as close as possible to smooth HD video.? Still, Canning admits that the video, while strikingly vivid and seemingly realistic, is not a precise view of what it would look and sound like to land on Mars.
?I believe that my video is more accurate in some regards and less in others,? Canning wrote, saying he sacrificed accuracy in color tone and through creating the intermediate frames.

R. I. P. Vile Rat, aka Sean Smith, technogamer extraordinaire.
Fantastic pic of our stormy sun in action!
Bloggers here and elsewhere have done a first-rate job at keeping us informed on Arctic sea ice loss. Now some scientists are worried it's just the tip of the iceberg:
In short, the melting effect makes it much harder to quantify the amount of ice there is and the satellite tends to see more ice than there actually is. That's why monitoring groups such as NSIDC or the university of Bremen try to compensate with weather filters or by calculating the ice extent over a number of days rather than on individual ones.
Wow! Jupiter takes one for the team!
How might a bird deal with human faces? Pretty good, it turns out (W/video):
In a more recent study, Dr. Marzluff and colleagues used brain scans to demonstrate that crows not only remember faces, but they can also remember how they were treated by various people.

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On This Day In History September 15

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 15 September 2012 09:00:00 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow GazetteThis is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future. Find the past "On This Day in History" here.September 15 is the 258th day of the year (259th in leap[...]

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Pull Up a Chair

post from Firedoglake on 15 September 2012 08:00:52 AM. © Firedoglake

I ran across a story about 33,000 people in Guatemala being evacuated from the area around the Fuego volcano."Fuego" means "fire" in Spanish and in this case it's appropriate because its decided to stop its daily smoking habit and start belching some[...]

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Today's campaign schedule

post from Daily Kos on 15 September 2012 08:00:04 AM. © Daily Kos

At least as of last night, these were the only scheduled official appearances by members of either campaign. The White House Press Office issued an advisory that there were no public appearances slated at all for either Barack Obama or Joe Biden over the weekend. And the Republican ticket seems to be quiet on the top dog front. Best guess: This is the calm before the whirlwind of a storm ahead.

Jill Biden ? Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, MI

Canvass kick-off event, OFA office (Grand Rapids)
10:45 (EDT)

Kalamazoo College (Kalamazoo)
1 PM (EDT)

Opening of OFA field office (Battle Creek)
2:40 PM (EDT)

Paul Ryan ? Oldsmar, FL

R.E. Olds Park
11:45 AM (EDT)

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dule

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Mike's Blog Round Up

post from Crooks and Liars on 15 September 2012 08:00:00 AM. © Crooks and Liars

Ah, the weekend. Time to look back at the &#@%ing crazy Republican week that was, as well as, in light of his response to what happened in Egypt and Libya, at Mitt's utterly nonsensical campaign.

Thump Whip: Calling out Dear Leader Rush, pathological liar.

Human Voices: Pushing back against a pro-Republican public opinion survey.

Prairie Weather: Coming back to Romney's ongoing Bain problem.

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Seeking justice for the Hillsborough 96 (against politicians and the police).

Round-up by Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction (@mjwstickings). I'll be here through Sunday.

Send tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

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http://crooksandliars.com/stickings/mikes-blog-round-94

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Open Thread And Cartoon Of The Week

A cyber-penny for your thoughts. Fueling the Addiction By Ann Telnaes, the Cartoonist Group

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gress0Borg0Cclimate0C20A120C0A90C150C8552810Copen0Ethread0Eand0Ecartoon0Eof0Ethe0Eweek0E30C/story01.htm

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Cartnoon

Rudolph Valentino- The Sheik (1921) (1:26)If you want to understand Rudolph Valentino as a phenomena you really have to think James Dean. Not as active as you would figure, suffocatingly typecast, died young to become an icon.His films are almost[...]

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http://www.docudharma.com/diary/30865/cartnoon-by-ek-hornbeck

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Stray Cats - Stray Cat Strut

Cats are still the top story over here for us after yet another visit to the vet. Sushi had a thyroid problem earlier this year but he seems to be on the mend following one week at the vet hospital and special treatment. In fact, he eats and eats like never before after dropping a few pounds at the start of the year.More recently it's been our slightly older cat girl, Nasdaq. She had two...