Romney Lies, Panties, Lizard placentas and God’s Infallibility

Running: imagine running a 1:04 10K and a 5:40 marathon. “Meh”, you say? Well…what if the guy doing it is over 90 years old?

I’m sure impressed!

Humor

Science
Yet another example that shows that animal groups are somewhat “fuzzy” collections: some reptiles do bear “live” young.

Politics

Time to write my right wing Representative again…not that it will do any good in the district that I am currently in. Next election though I get switched to a Democratic district. Yes, I know; there is a price to be paid by lumping all of the Democrats together and all of the Republicans together. Nevertheless, I get to vote in at least one locally competitive election (the Democratic primary).

I have to give Mr. Aaron Schock credit for one thing though: he DOES respond and gives detailed responses. He has a good reputation for constituent services, which is the tradition in his district (formerly Ray LaHood’s and Bob Michael’s).

Keith Olbermann
In this first clip, the relevant parts come at 2:09 (when Michelle Bachmann, who has worked in government for years, claims to have been in the private sector “her entire life”) and at 3:02. Yep, a State Representative who fought for the right to carry concealed weapons into bars was caught driving drunk…with a weapon.

In this clip, the relevant parts are at 1:35 when Sarah Palin whines about Mike Tyson making a remark about her (uh, how does ESPN employ Mike Tyson anyway?) Then at 3:10, a right wing radio host says that President Obama caused more damage to the country than the 9-11 attacks…and he does this on the Sean Hannity show.

Romney’s Lies
This is from a letter sent to Romney supporters. Note: this is more of a misleading while remaining factual:

President Obama’s record on jobs is shameful. Under his watch, America has lost more than 2 million jobs. He is on track to be the first president in modern history to leave office with a net job loss. President Obama has turned America into an economic disaster zone. The only question is whether we can make it to the election of 2012 before Obama takes us all the way back to 1929.

Ok, this is yet again another look at the jobs graph with a timeline:

We were shedding jobs at the time that President Obama took office and the stimulus bill wasn’t signed into law until February 2009. It was a couple of months after that that the losses slowed and then slowly became gains.

But Mr. Romney wants his supporters to believe that somehow President Obama was responsible for the losses that were going on as soon as he was sworn in…as if his policies could somehow take effect before they were even passed by Congress?

Republicans and Deficits

God is the answer to everything
This video shows how people think: they are quite Panglossian when it comes to “God’s will” and how it is always for the best.

How a grown adult in a technological society can believe in some sort of cosmic puppet master doesn’t make sense to me.

But much of American society doesn’t make sense; for the longest time, “dumb is in”. This is an interesting article on that.

While stupidity is NOT a left-right thing (many liberals believe in all sorts of ridiculous woo and some advocates can be so dogmatic as to be immune to data and reason), we are seeing much of the top-tier stupidity from the Republican party. Here Robert Reich laments that David Frumm is stepping down from the NPR show Marketplace because he can no longer represent Republican party views.

What I respect about conservatives like Frumm is that they realize that different situations call for different policy responses. No, I don’t “love” big government for its own sake, but I do think that there are some areas of society that the private sector doesn’t handle well (e. g., insurance for those who are perpetually sick). I don’t think that government spending for stimulus is always called for, but I think that it IS called for when we are in a liquidity trap. I think that paying down the debt is a good thing…AT THE PROPER TIME. For example: you might owe money, but if you roof springs a leak, you’d be foolish not to borrow money to fix it. Of course, you wouldn’t spring for a big screen TV but you would fix the roof.

Time and place!!!!